The concept of a national catalogue Jean Sykes Librarian and Director of Information Services, LSE Director, CC Interop Project

The UKNUC Feasibility Study Two surveys: one with academics and research students, one with librarians System testing, including Z clumps Aims: to find out how an UKNUC might be used, what functions it could perform, and which technologies were appropriate Sponsors: JISC, RSLP, BL

Concertation Day February 2001 – a mixed reception Was the concept too HE focused? Would regional catalogues be better? Or subject ones? What about rare books, archives, maps, non-print materials? Serials important, not monographs Waste of public money – just use BL catalogue and OCLC?

UKNUC report published April 2001 Physical union catalogue preferred to “immature” virtual ones But UKNUC should be adaptable to include virtual as technology improved Serials issues quite different from monographs Major problem of poor standard of bibliographic records for serials A separate national serials catalogue strongly recommended – priority 1

UKNUC report continued Foundation catalogues to be: COPAC, BL, 20 cross-sectoral libraries with collections important to research Links to clumps to be incorporated into foundation architecture from outset along with Z target accessibility Improved resource discovery facilities for subject, regional, and format searches The 20 libraries to represent public libraries, special libraries, government and Research Council interests

What about serials? To start with BL, NLS, NLW and major research libraries Then some non-CURL libraries and some small specialist institutions Records to be upgraded as part of the build, and libraries to both input into and benefit from improvements in cataloguing standards Researchers need access to full text at article level – link to OpenURL initiatives?

SUNCAT A scoping study was commissioned in early 2002 Funding for Phase 1 agreed by JISC and RSLP in August 2002 EDINA with Ex Libris and Edinburgh University Library won the ITT and were awarded £700k for 2 years (2003 –2004) 22 libraries in first 2 years

SUNCAT continued Phase 2 funding approved 2005/ further libraries to be added Focus to be on specialist collections, including older and rarer materials Phase 3 (2006 -) will be the consolidation phase User interface needs more work

Relevant national initiatives JISC’s large-scale resource discovery programme (5/99); 4 clumps projects COPAC, funded by JISC and CURL (1995 -) RSLG Report 2003; RLN JISC’s DNER > Information Environment JISC’s eLib3 programme – Stephen Pinfield’s report January 2001 “Further research and development work should be carried out on Z39.50”

Why CC Interop project? Clumps projects finishing in 2001 No further JISC funding for Z39.50 projects UKNUC study recommended a place for Z in a national catalogue as well as COPAC (in due course) RSLG discussing a national catalogue Gap in R & D and in funding became obvious (see Stephen Pinfield)

CC Interop May 2002 to April partners: MIMAS, InforM25, and CDLR 3 union catalogues: COPAC, InforM25 and CAIRNS/RIDING; all functioning services 3 work packages; £227k Wp A: COPAC and InforM25 Wp B: CDLR and RIDING Wp C: User behaviour study

What questions were asked? How distributed and large physical union catalogues can interact How to use dynamic landscaping to refine user searches (CLDs to select sub-sets of catalogue) What interoperability standards are needed What can we find out about the behaviour of users when they search union catalogues

Overall aims of CC Interop Reach conclusions re feasibility of inter- linking virtual and physical union catalogues as part of a national catalogue Identify technical and organisational issues to be addressed in a national catalogue Inform future developments of a national catalogue in the context of the RLN and the Information Environment

More questions than answers Like most good research CC Interop raises more questions than it answers The next speakers will outline the progress made in several aspects of the project Then we will discuss the future: what further research needs to be done? And what do you think are the key issues?