History of the portal

Easy availability of the Internet, also on mobile devices, digitalisation of texts and the spread of electronic resources is in a substantial manner changing our information demands. The priority is becoming unrestricted access to information and quick orientation in it. This is also the reason for creation of the portal Knihovny.cz, which integrates the information and book resources of the Czech libraries and offers their efficient searching and overview.

The first considerations about a common portal for the Czech libraries emerged in 2010 at the meeting of the Central Libraries Council and invited experts. The need for support of strong central services subsequently became one of the priorities of the Concept for development of libraries in the Czech Republic for the period 2011–2015, which was approved by the Government as a strategy for future orientation of Czech librarianship. The main focus here is on the use of information and communication technologies so that each of us, regardless of place of residence, has easy access to all the resources, information and services offered by the library system of the Czech Republic as a whole.

The idea of creating a central portal builds on the already existing Union Catalogue of the Czech Republic and the Uniform Information Gateway; however, it brings new functionality that it was not possible to incorporate in these systems.

In 2012, the project objective was the development of a single interface of the Czech libraries with the working title Central Portal of Libraries. In the initial stage of the project, it was necessary to solve many technical aspects. Many functional library systems exist in the Czech Republic, which it was necessary to respect during the creation of the new portal, but on the other hand, also mutually interconnect. Already in 2012, the first contact was made with the providers of technological solutions. In the same year, the website Knihovny.cz was also launched, which informs people about the development of the project.

One year later (2013), full work started on the realisation of the portal. Four working teams were created, comprising librarians and the ranks of the independent experts who focused on the realisation of the individual project objectives. At the same time, the Council of the Central Portal of Libraries was established, comprising the statutory representatives of the involved libraries, which approves the outputs of the working teams and decides about further procedure and development.

In 2013, a questionnaire survey was also conducted that mapped the needs of the libraries, as well as the visitors themselves, which helped identify the major tasks that development of the new portal should fulfill. The search for a suitable external provider of a technological solution still was in progress.

2014 entailed a major change. There was further elaboration of the project target of the portal and a working team was also created for its long-term organisational and financial management. The council abandoned the initial intent and opted for pilot testing of the development of the portal directly with libraries through an open source solution. This key task is entrusted to the Moravian Library in Brno.

In 2015, intensive technical development was already in progress as well as preparation of the libraries and library systems for integration into the portal. The expert team utilised the experience acquired from earlier design of several smaller portals, which to a limited extent make data from various library catalogues available to the users from a single search window. The pilot version of the portal Knihovny.cz was created on the open source platform VuFind, which is also used by the similar Finnish portal Finna.fi.

In autumn 2015, the beta version of the portal Knihovny.cz was launched. The resources of the founding libraries were gradually integrated in it and its further functions are being tested. In parallel with technical development, work on improvement of the portal services is in progress so that it shall provide its users with the easiest path to the sought books, documents and other information resources as well as to the individual libraries. In October 2015, the organisational structure also changed. It was decided that the most active members of Working Groups will form the Expert Team who would be an advisor to the Steering Board and the development team at the Moravian Library in Brno. The broader Working Group is made of delegates from the participating libraries and of outside experts.

The portal was launched on October 26, 2016.

You can read more about the libraries involved in the projekt here.