1. 1 The Future Of Union Catalogues Some BL Perspectives Neil Wilson Head of Bibliographic Development Scholarship & Collections Boston Spa 17 th March 2006

2. 2 COPAC An Evolving Union Catalogue Background  COPAC offers free access to the merged catalogues of CURL members & currently contains around 31 million records BL Involvement  Provision of 12,000,000 merged records from the BL’s new ILS covering material in the ‘British Library Integrated Catalogue’ (BLIC)

3. 3 COPAC Coming Developments 1 ILL form  COPAC V3 incorporates an ILL request option sharing the mechanism used by Zetoc & customizable by individual libraries  The default request page includes notes & document details from COPAC records which libraries can amend to include: copyright declarations links to a local catalogue search links to local ILL pages

4. 4 COPAC Coming Developments 2 XML database  Work underway to create a completely new COPAC XML database using the LC’s MODS format with a trial version available mid 2006  New record matching & de-duplication procedures  Redevelopment of the COPAC interface OpenURL  COPAC is now OpenURL compliant & V3 searchers can now access their local OpenURL resolver via COPAC result sets  Alternatively, libraries can also link their resolver to the COPAC Interface using the COPAC CookiePusher SRU/W  COPAC now has an SRW/U interface as an alternative to Z39.50 for direct access to records

5. 5 SUNCAT A New National Serials Union Catalogue Aims To build a national union catalogue of serials held in UK research libraries that will:  be the key online tool for researchers to locate serials in the UK  provide librarians with a single source of high quality records for improving local catalogues  University of Edinburgh (EDINA) is lead partner

6. 6 SUNCAT Development Timetable Phase 1 (Developmental - 2003/04) Creation of union catalogue with critical mass of serial titles using MARC21 records from CONSER & ISSN databases plus records from 22 key UK libraries presenting the highest quality record & all matched holdings while also retaining all contributed data BL supplied 843,000 records covering its serials holdings Phase 2 (Pilot - 2005/06) Coverage increased to cover 42 additional libraries, including specialist collections covering older & rare materials Phase 3 (Operational – 2006/07) Service to be consolidated to ensure its long term stability

7. 7 SUNCAT Developments ‘The Librarian's interface’  This new web interface will allow contributors to:  Download records via z39.50 or email, in a variety of formats  Undertake assisted matching of their contributed records to reduce duplication

8. 8 The European Library (TEL) An International Portal to Union Catalogues Background  TEL aims to assist sharing of information from Europe's national libraries to users worldwide  Started as the TEL Project, part funded by the EU with coordination from the BL & 10 partners in 9 countries  By summer 2006 there will be 26 partners with target of 45+ of widely different sizes  Supported by TEL Office (KB) & funded by participating full partners  Currently data of 15 national libraries can be searched individually or in user defined groups, providing access to numerous collections including images, maps & music

9. 9 TEL Provides… End users with:  Federated search and retrieval via a web interface in the user’s own language  Links to services for:  Digital objects  Document ordering  Local systems using open linking Participating libraries with:  Wide exposure of their collections  A pre-built set of services for improved interoperability  Interconnection with Library’s own systems or harvesting of data into a central database  An acceptable participation fee

10. 10 SRU Browser = MS IE (v5.5+) or Mozilla based SRU gateway Local SRU database XSL Scripts etc. Gateway web server Remote SRU database Remote Z3950 database BL Z3950 database Local Z3950 database XML database Cheshire 2 database ISTC catalogue, Illuminated MSS Collect Britain TEL Partners BNF, SNL, COPAC TEL Library of Congress BL Web Site Search PubMed ILS, ETOC, Cadensa

11. 11 Conclusions  Incorporation of more IT industry standard technologies (e.g. Unicode, OpenURL, HTTP etc) & a move away from library specific standards  Move to increasing use of XML based solutions for data issues  Increasing range of network options for both traditional and new union catalogues  Increased linking to/from local catalogues