The Library of the Hellenic Parliament, the second and most important library in the country, now uses the platform openABEKT of the National Documentation Center (ECB), for the management and public availability of its Catalog (http://parliament.οpenabekt.gr).
The results of the collaboration between the ESF and the Library of the House of Representatives on the implementation of the Open and Open Library Catalog and Functioning Platform were presented on Thursday 19 April 2018 Thursday at a joint meeting of the Library Committee and the Standing Committee on Educational Affairs of the Parliament.
Many MPs from all parties were present at the meeting, who praised their cooperation two institutional bodies and emphasized the rich and important work produced by the Library of the Parliament (http://library.parliament.gr), as well as the key role of the ESF in organizing and distributing digital content and in developing and disseminating relevant know-how. They also referred to the ESF's contribution to supporting the public interest in disseminating the knowledge generated by the Greek system, integrating new technologies into libraries and solving interoperability issues.
This openABEKT (www.oftabekt.gr) is a modern cloud infrastructure service that has been fully deployed by the ECB based on the modern needs of libraries. In the framework of the first phase of the ESF cooperation with the Library of the House of Representatives, the library was moved to the new openABEKT environment and new functionalities were integrated into a friendly search and navigation environment in the contents of the catalog.
At the same time, the online distance learning took place education of staff through the modern openABEKT eLearning environment, while continuous online support is provided through the eHelpdesk and eKnowledgeBase services. It is worth noting that the ESF cloud infrastructure ensures the full provision of library services (functions διαχείρισης μελών και συναλλαγών, όπως δανεισμός και κρατήσεις υλικού, διαθεσιμότητας αντιτύπων, στατιστικών), την απρόσκοπτη mode της υπηρεσίας με υψηλά επίπεδα διαθεσιμότητας (24/7/365) και με υψηλές ταχύτητες σύνδεσης στο διαδίκτυο.
The catalog of the Parliamentary Library currently includes 366.616 bibliographic entries and 590.686 copies and issues. Particularly important and interesting for users is that 878 digital archives of important publications, on subjects of medical practice and hygiene of the last century, after appropriate digital editing, are viewed and freely available in the Catalog, for browsing and reading, through the special e-reader application provided by openABEKT.
Most bibliographic records refer to text documents, and include smaller collections of cartographic, audiovisual material, some manuscripts, and a small number of recordings and multimedia files. Apart from a few tens of thousands of magazines and monographs, most of the content is monographs, and much of it is in foreign languages: French, English, German and Italian, and Latin and Ancient Greek.
The oldest book of the Catalog is from 1435, i.e. before printing, while in the Library's collections there are periodicals from the beginning of the 19th century, such as e.g. the Naval Chronicle or the Journal du Palais; In the Catalog there is rich and interesting material from the 20th century as well, such as e.g. purchases by E. Venizelou, E. Repoulis, D. Politou, G. Kafantaris and D. Ralli since 1917 and documents from World War II, which will be fascinating to scholars of Greek history, but also to students and teachers who wish to frame the lesson of history in the classroom.