The Library of the Hellenic Parliament, the second and most important library of the country, is now using the openABEKT platform of the National Documentation Center (ESF) to manage and publicize its Directoryhttp://parliament.οpenabekt.gr).
The Results of the cooperation of the ECB with the Library of the Parliament in terms of the implementation of the Integrated Platform for Management and Provision of the Catalog and Functions of the Library openΑΚΕΤΕ were presented on Thursday, April 19, 2018 at a joint meeting of the Library Committee and the Standing Committee of Educational Affairs of the Parliament.
Many MPs from all parties, who praised the collaboration of the two institutions, stressed the rich and important work produced by the Parliamentary Library (http://library.parliament.gr), as well as the decisive role of the ECB in issues organizationand distribution of digital content and in the development and dissemination of relevant know-how. They also referred to the ESF's contribution in terms of supporting the public interest in the dissemination of knowledge produced by the Greek system, the integration of new technologies in libraries and the resolution of 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 remote online training of the staff was carried out through the modern openABEKT eLearning environment, while continuous online support is provided through the eHelpdesk and eKnowledgeBase services. It is worth noting that the EKT cloud infrastructure ensures the full provision of library services (membership and transaction management functions, such as material borrowing and reservations, availability of copies, statistics), the uninterrupted operation of the service with high levels of availability (24/7/ 365) and at high speeds connectionon the internet.
The catalog of the Parliamentary Library currently includes 366.616 bibliographic entries and 590.686 copies and issues. Of particular importance and interest to users is that 878 digital files of major publications, on subjects medicineof practice and hygiene of the last century, after appropriate digital editing, are viewed and freely available in the Catalogue, 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 in 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.
