Service description
Melinda is the National Metadata Repository and a service for libraries. Libraries catalog their materials in the shared data repository, from which this information can be utilised. Centralising the data saves work and cuts costs in libraries while enabling better customer service.
Melinda connects the participating libraries to a national production environment for bibliographic metadata. Library professionals get access to tools with which to participate in the production of the data for the shared metadata repository and to utilise the data in their local catalogue.
Melinda’s operating model is system independent. This means that the service has the same aims and tasks regardless of the current back end system. The development of technical platforms does not affect Melinda’s operating model.
Currently, the service and the union catalogue are built upon the Aleph integrated library system. Library patrons can search for information directly from the Melinda OPAC.
The service is expanding gradually
Melinda contains the Finnish National Bibliography as well as reference data about the materials in university libraries, most joint libraries and polytechnic libraries under the Ministry of Education and Culture, the Library of Parliament, the National Repository Library and the Library of Statistics. Among public libraries, the Tampere City Library - Pirkanmaa Regional Library and the Kokkola City Library - Regional Library have joined the service as pilot libraries. These pilot schemes have created practices for public libraries to join Melinda. Melinda will gradually become the shared metadata repository for all Finnish libraries.
As a rule, Melinda contains all materials of the participating libraries. However, the libraries have catalogued final theses and electronic material packages in accordance with their own practices. At the beginning of 2016, the database contained approximately nine million records. The development and expansion of the service is performed in the context of the National Metadata Repository project.
The service is based on the union catalogue
Melinda (and its predecessor, the union catalogue LINDA) is the oldest service offered by the National Library of Finland to the library network. It is based on the automation of cataloguing commenced in the 1970s by the IT unit of Research Libraries. The unit was a project of the Ministry of Education and Culture from the 1970s to early 1990s. The unit was annexed to the National Library, then Helsinki University Library, in 1993. LINDA was opened for online information retrieval in 1993-94.
Ever since its inception, the union catalogue has worked as a