Project information
MOLIN : Moravian Library Information Network

The realisation of the MOLIN project will allow two universities (MU, UP)
and two research libraries (MZK, SVKOL) to collectively form a library
information network in the Moravian part of the Czech Republic.
The primary aim is to complete the automation of the individual sites
and to 'upgrade' them to a level that would make co-operation in all
library activities possible. While the logistics of the network pose
unique problems, it is precisely the point of the MOLIN consortium to
demonstrate that a unity of purpose can combine with the power of the
new technologies in order to transform these and other limitations
into an advantage for all. A leaner system will provide better and more
comprehensive access to information in a large geographic area, return
some badly needed purchasing power to the individual library budgets
and provide a working foundation for other libraries in the region
who may wish to join in the future.

They are two major challenges faced by MOLIN:

1. 
   At the organisational level the four partners come under two different
   jurisdictions. While MU and UP libraries are, as parts of universities,
   governed by their home institutions (and, in the last instance, by the
   Ministry of Education), MZK and SVKOL, as state scientific libraries,
   fall under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Culture. This does not
   encourage systematic cooperation between these two 'types' of libraries,
   in spite of a long standing informal tradition of overlapping use.
   
2. 
   At the technical level the partners are representatives of two library
   automation systems which have come to dominate as the systems of choice
   for the larger libraries in the Czech Republic: TINLIB (IME, UK)
   predominates among the universities, including MU and UP, while
   ALEPH (Israel) was the system initially chosen by the CASLIN group,
   including MZK.
   The specific advantages of either one of these systems aside, unless
   the specific software architecture are bridged so that the respective
   libraries are linked at all levels of record exchange, the two systems
   will remain apart and so only add one more layer of separation
   between the libraries.
   

MOLIN is conceived as one of the CASLIN+ projects (Czech and Slovak
Library Information Network) that have been funded by the Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation and therefore assumes close co-operation with the latter's primary centre in the Czech Republic, the National Library in Prague.