1. Unless otherwise noted, the following discussion pertains to the situation as it appeared in the latter part of 1996 and the first part of 1997. Understandably, a year or two later many of the issues raised will have taken on a new significance. [BACK]

2. These and other features should be available shortly. As for the size of the database, of the total collection only a fragment is presently on-line. Prior to the introduction of the new system, libraries had been cataloging in ISIS. These records have been converted with little or no loss to the UNIMARC format, which meant-in the case of the National Library-that, from the outset, several hundred thousand records were ALEPH-ready. New acquisitions are cataloged directly into the new system and more records are made available through retrospective conversion.

The Web addresses (with access to the catalogs) are as follows: National Library of the Czech Republic (Prague), www.nkp.cz; the Moravian Regional Library (Brno), www.mzk.cz; the Slovak National Library (Martin), www.matica.sk/snk/snk.html; the University Library in Bratislava, www.ulib.sk. [BACK]

3. For additional details on this project, see the LINCA proposal presented to The Mellon Foundation (LINCA 1994). [BACK]

4. As of January 1997, the two campuses of UPJS have been turned into two universities. The move was political (divide and conquer), playing off existing institutional rivalry. What the consequence of this division will be on the project is not yet clear. The details of the original project can be found in the KOLIN proposal to The Mellon Foundation (KOLIN 1995). [BACK]

5. For a more detailed account of the compatibility and conversion problem as well as of the solution, see Appendix H of the MOLIN proposal (MOLIN 1996). TinLib is the most widely used library system among Czech universities (the Czech vendor is located at Charles University in Prague). [BACK]

6. More precisely, out of the approximately 1.5 million volumes deposited in the central library (the Klementinum), about one-fifth were unshelved. Because these volumes were new acquisitions-most in demand by users-most requests went unfulfilled. [BACK]

7. Hence also the symbolic significance of including the call number on the electronic record-it actually corresponds to a retrievable object! What a treat! [BACK]

8. With the series of austerity measures introduced by the Czech government in spring 1997, it remains unclear how the plans will be realized. [BACK]

9. Equally important in the area of rare book and manuscript preservation is the direct digitalization project at the National Library in Prague, in which early medieval illuminated manuscripts are being scanned and made available on CD-ROM (in 1995/96: Antiphonarium Sedlecense and Chronicon Concilii Constantiniensis ). This project is a UNESCO-sponsored Memory of the World project. For more on this project and its latest developments, see A. Knoll (1997), http://digit.nkp.cz/Structure_Proposal/navrhIII.htm. [BACK]

10. There is much more to this fascinating and complex project, well worth a separate study. The interested reader may wish to look at the original text of the project as it was presented to The Mellon Foundation for Funding (RETROCON 1994) and at a special publication of the National Library devoted to this topic (Bare&scarlon;s and Stoklasová 1995). [BACK]

11. With the proliferation of the cellular phone network in Eastern Europe, it is possible that many connections-such as user access-will take the wireless route. [BACK]

12. "External" constraints are often found embedded inside the organization. I wish to exercise caution in using this term since it is often quite difficult to pinpoint where an organization ends and the external world begins. [BACK]

13. The role of time management and, in particular, of delays in the implementation of the library project is a topic of a separate study (Lass 1997). [BACK]

14. According to a recent document (issued by the Slovak Ministry of Culture), the library's new mandate would include, among other things, the issuing of ISBNs and the development of the national bibliographic records. This mandate has put the library in the situation, apparently desired, of having to demand from the Slovak National Library the transfer of positions, computer hardware (mostly CASLIN Mellon purchases), and existing databases, without which it cannot do the job, although how it would gain the expertise remains unclear. While there are other examples in which institutional rivalries have adversely affected the CASLIN project, in only some of them does the rivalry reside with the libraries themselves. In several instances it is the libraries that are caught in the middle of a battle. Such is the case in the KOLIN project discussed above (see also footnote 4). [BACK]

15. On several occasions, librarians of one institution would express concern that "the other" library received more funds than they did. The symbolic significance of foreign (Western) funds is not to be underestimated nor should the role that this phenomenon has on the actual implementation of the project (covered best by the anthropological studies of cargo cults or witchcraft). As for the politics of institutional positioning, the situation under review was made transparent (and more complicated) by the breakup of Czechoslovakia and, following that, by the surfacing of other regional tensions. As a result, the relationship across the border is more amicable (there is nothing to compete over), while the relationship between the two libraries in each of the countries is much less so. [BACK]

16. One of the surprises was the funding of automation at the National (then University or State) Library during the 1980s in Prague, which resulted in the development of a local machine-readable record format (MAKS) that became the accepted system among a majority of Czech and Slovak libraries. The grounds for technology transfer were therefore prepared (contrary to some who maintained that there was no expertise in place) when automation arrived in earnest after 1990. [BACK]

17. Ironically, the library became one of the safe places to hide politically discredited intellectuals (from the post-1968 purges). [BACK]

18. If the purchase of foreign (especially Western) books and periodicals was restricted for mostly political reasons, it is now actually stopped altogether due to zero (!) funding. [BACK]

19. As a result, organizational behavior retains its characteristic sluggishness. It is reasonable to predict that as the constraints on the budget continue to increase, so will the familiar ability to trick the system. Under these conditions, teaching new management skills has been close to impossible, and introducing a new record structure and cataloging rules has been very slow. These conditions account, to a large extent, for the continued backlog of uncataloged books. [BACK]

20. The fact that "planning" is a discredited term doesn't help. And trying to explain that socialist planning and strategic planning may be quite different things doesn't seem to work. [BACK]

21. On the Czech side, the Ministry of Culture has decided to support library automation projects throughout the country, in the form of capital investment grants (no funds for salaries) that meet CASLIN standards. [BACK]

22. As of early fall 1997, the prospects for a functioning CASLIN Union Catalogue look promising. With the purchase of an Oracle software license and access to a Digital Alpha server, the plan is to make access to the database available to participating libraries by early 1998. [BACK]