The%20concept%20of%20a%20national%20catalogue

1
The concept of a national catalogue

• Jean Sykes
• Librarian and Director of Information Services,
  LSE
• Director, CC Interop Project

2
The UKNUC Feasibility Study 2000 - 2001

• 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

3
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?

4
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

5
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

6
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?

7
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

8
SUNCAT continued

• Phase 2 funding approved 2005/06
• 100 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

9
Relevant national initiatives

• JISCs large-scale resource discovery programme
  (5/99) 4 clumps projects
• COPAC, funded by JISC and CURL (1995 -)
• RSLG Report 2003 RLN 2004-07
• JISCs DNER gt Information Environment
• JISCs eLib3 programme Stephen Pinfields
  report January 2001
• Further research and development work should be
  carried out on Z39.50

10
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)

11
CC Interop May 2002 to April 2004

• 3 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

12
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

13
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

14
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?