COPAC: New research library union catalogue
| Date | 01 March 1997 |
| Published date | 01 March 1997 |
| Pages | 185-188 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb045553 |
| Author | Shirley Cousins |
COPAC: new research library
union catalogue
Shirley Cousins
COPAC Help Desk, COPAC Project, National Services Group, Manchester Computing,
Computer Building, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, UK
E-mail: copac@mcc.ac.uk
http://copac.ac.uk/copac
1. What is COPAC?
COPAC is a new union OPAC which provides free access to the information contained in the main online cat-
alogues of a number of important academic research library collections. At the moment records are
con-
tributed by the university libraries of Cambridge, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Leeds, Oxford and Trinity College
Dublin.
All these libraries are members of the Consortium of University Research Libraries (CURL). At the
time of
writing,
records from the Imperial College of
Science,
Technology
and
Medicine and London University
Library (Senate House) are being loaded and the online databases of the remaining twelve CURL member
libraries will be added in due course.
2. Background to the COPAC service 3.1. Database construction
Since 1987 CURL members have been contributing
records to a shared database to facilitate co-opera-
tive cataloguing. This has proved a valuable
resource and the cataloguing and reference ser-
vices based on this database are still supported by
members of the COPAC project
team.
In the past the
CURL database has only been accessible to library
staff,
but it was recognised that this could be of value
to end-users too if it could be made available in an
appropriate form. Thus in 1995 money was made
available by JISC (Joint Information Systems
Committee) to fund a three year project to produce
an OPAC based on the CURL database, providing
direct end-user access to the unified resources of
the CURL member libraries.
3. The initial service
The COPAC project was established in November
1995 and the COPAC service was launched in April
1996.
There was a lot to do in the six months avail-
able before the launch so the decision was taken to
concentrate on producing a basic but good quality
product which would provide a solid foundation for
further development, rather than trying to do too
much too soon and consequently not doing it
well.
There were two main areas to address in the initial
development: producing the database itself and pro-
viding an interface.
As part of the process of creating COPAC, data from
the contributing libraries is converted from MARC to
a COPAC record format. Obviously, receiving data
from a variety of sources results in the presence of
duplicate records. Consequently all incoming
records go through a process of duplicate detection
and record consolidation, producing single records
with multiple holdings statements. The database
which was available at the launch contained only five
library catalogues, with Trinity College Dublin being
added at a later date
3.2. COPAC interfaces
At the launch of COPAC a text interface was provid-
ed,
with a Web interface being made available soon
afterwards. The basic look and feel of the interfaces
was established early on but because of the time
pressure involved in developing the initial service the
range of features was limited.
4. COPAC in Year One
4.1.
The
COPAC
database
The only visible change to the current version of the
COPAC database has been the loading of the TCD
online catalogue and its merger
with
the other CURL
library records. However, despite the apparent calm
a lot of activity has been happening behind the
scenes.
FOCUS
article
..library
automation
The Electronic Library, Vol. 15, No. 3, June 1997 185
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