BIBLIONET: a service from the National Book Centre of Greece
Go to the BIBLIONET homepage (www.gbip.gr)

In the past, bibliographical statistics were compiled by hand (BBH of the French Institute of Athens). Today there is BIBLIONET. This is a true innovation, which is currently being offered free of charge by the Centre to professionals and book lovers. It is a tool which, as time goes by, will prove its usefulness and will contribute to improving the productivity of professionals who work with books. The more one uses it, the easier it is to find answers to queries for titles, authors, publishers, translators and other links in the book chain. Booksellers and librarians who use it are enthusiastic, and they aren’t the only ones: it is difficult to give up using it, and new users wonder why they didn’t start earlier, when they realise that it only requires a couple of hours of training in its basic functions. The ability to apply BIBLIONET to all parts of their work is remarkable. It can be used by individuals or groups. It has a wide range of search options, including the ability to transfer from a general to a specific view. It makes it easy to improve organisation at many levels and changes the method of ordering. Even before a book reaches the shelves there is first an announcement in new publications, and then, in a few days, the entry is complete and the book is categorised according to its Dewey Decimal number. It enhances the work of every professional, allowing them more time for their customers. There are many people who want daily information from BIBLIONET at the EKEBI’s information office at the Stoa tou vivliou book arcade (tel. 210 3248341-2). In other words, BIBLIONET is worth the time, energy and money for professionals, and offers enjoyment to book lovers.

The History of BIBLIONET
The idea of a full and authoritative database for books in publication was created when EKEBI was founded in 1998, after research funded by the share capital of representative bodies in the sector: 45 important publishing houses; 2 publishers associations (Athens Book Publishers Association and the Book Publishers Association); the Panhellenic Federation of Publishers and Booksellers and EKEBI itself. The company, in accordance with the guidance of its shareholders, aims to support the book sector. However, despite the low sales price of the product, the book market was not able to ensure its viability. Since 2005, EKEBI has undertaken to purchase and exclusively manage the database, as suggested by the company’s shareholders, as it is the only body able to guarantee the viability, quality and availability of this incredibly useful tool to all those who are interested. The website www.biblionet.gr is updated every day without fail, and its services are provided at no cost.

What happens abroad
The bibliographical product BIBLIONET is equivalent to corresponding products abroad (such as Bowker in the USA; the Nielsen Book Data in Great Britain; Electre in France; Informazioni Editoriali in Italy; Micronet in Spain; and VNB in Germany), companies with which BIBLIONET S.A. contributes to the shared promotion and access website BookDB.com (Book DataBase). The National Book Centre of Greece is currently the only national book centre in Europe which provides such a service free of charge to professionals and the public, since all the other services are privatized (except the one in Germany) and their products are expensive.

BIBLIONET includes information about:
•  130,000 book titles published in Greece
detailed bibliographical details including book title, author’s name, publisher, ISBN, subject, Dewey Decimal Classification-DDC number.
photograph of the front cover
biography, photograph and a list of the author’s works
retail information about the book (distributors, price, availability)
•  70,000 creators (authors, translators, editors, series editors, illustrators, photographers, painters and others)

Training
A few hours of training is enough for one to discover the wealth of possibilities of BIBLIONET. Every year, at the International Book Fair of Thessaloniki, seminars are organised for booksellers and librarians. There are also, once a month depending on demand, similar seminars organised for professionals from the Book Workshop (EKEBI, Sokratis Kambouropoulos, skabouropoulos@ekebi.gr, 4 Athanasiou Diakou St., Markigianni, Akropolis Metro Station, tel. 210 9200308).

Bookshops which use it
There are 29 bookshop websites which use the database systematically, in real time (online) to provide book queries and sales: books.gr (Eleftheroudakis), papasotiriou.gr, estiabookstore.gr , patakis.gr, evripidis.gr, florasfun.gr, bibliotopia.gr, allbooks.gr, bazaarbooks.gr, libro.gr, govostis.gr, odisseas.gr, tsamantakis.gr, ekfrasi.gr, bookexperts.gr, aboutbooks.gr, vivliofono.gr, nikoletakis.gr, diethnesbooks.gr, thebookstore.gr, diaspora.gr, booksingreek.gr, lemoni.gr, psarasbooks.gr, bibliopolio.gr, booksfromgreece.gr, dokimakis.gr (Dokimakis, Herakleion), oionos.gr (Koutras, Lamia), bibliagora.co.uk (London), the national bookshop network Fnac, Public (Germanos), and many more bookshops have signed contracts with EKEBI and are preparing to use it.

Also available as a DVD-ROM for professionals
For those professionals who do not have access to the internet, the database is available on DVD-ROM, a new edition of which is released each year, with the opportunity to update data via temporary connection to the internet.