Focus news
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb045636 |
| Date | 01 March 1998 |
| Published date | 01 March 1998 |
| Pages | 181-182 |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
The libraries of the University of Oxford and OCLC
celebrated the automation of the post-1920 cata-
logue of the Bodleian Library on 1 May 1998. The
OCLC's Retrospective Conversion staff have
con-
verted to machine-readable form 1.8 million titles
from the Bodleian Library's post-1920 catalogue.
The work began in July
1994,
and its completion rep-
resents a major achievement.
"The conversion of Bodley's post-1920 printed
guardbooks, possibly the largest operation of its kind
undertaken by a UK library, and certainly the most
complex, has been completed with great profession-
alism and dedication by the staff of OCLC" said
Peter Burnett, head of catalogues at the Bodleian
Library.
"Our thanks are extended to Greg McKinney
and his dedicated team for their work, and their
friendship throughout."
"The Oxford conversion increases access to one of
the world's great library collections," said Phyllis
Spies,
vice president, OCLC Sales and
International. "It will have enormous benefits, not
only for the Bodleian and its users but for
researchers and scholars around the world. It will
also greatly facilitate other conversion efforts in other
libraries in the future."
The post-1920 collection includes a full range of sub-
jects and Roman alphabet
languages.
The Bodleian
Library, which formally opened in 1602, is one of the
oldest European libraries. With nine buildings on
eight separate sites and more than 6 million items, it
houses remarkable collections in almost every area.
In breaking one of the so-called golden rules rules of
conversion, namely that of not interpolating correc-
tions into the catalogue, the architects of this
automation have added significant intellectual value
to one of the most idiosyncratic of the great library
catalogues. However, the fact that users of the
Bodleian will no longer have to wield the library's
huge ledgers will deprive many of them of the only
exercise they ever get.
• • •
The Wellcome Library at the Royal College of
Veterinary Surgeons services a large number of
remote users, and this was a key factor in the selec-
tion of the Unicorn
Collection Management
System
as the new integrated library management system
there.
Librarian Tom Roper
said:
"After evaluating
Unicorn we decided it was just right for a library with
a large number of remote users".
The Unicorn system has been installed under the
Solaris operating system on a Sun Ultra server and
will provide access under a Graphical User Interface
(InfoVIEW for Windows with Z39.50) to OPAC ser-
vices,
cataloguing, authority control, circulation,
acquisitions and serials control.
The Library of the Royal College of Veterinary
Surgeons is the leading UK library serving the pro-
fession.
As well as the current collection, there is a
significant historical collection which will be retro-
spectively catalogued with Unicorn.
Unicorn is distributed and supported by SIRSI.
• • •
The Release 4.0 versions of two Geac client
prod-
ucts,
GeoCat
and
GeoPac,
offer improved function-
ality through new Windows-based Graphical User
Interfaces.
GeoCat 4.0 is a cataloguing tool that now offers the
ability to use the OCLC Z39.50 extended services to
notify OCLC that a record has been fished out of
their database. GeoPac is a graphical public access
client for searching local and remote databases.
With the new features of GeoPac
4.0,
users can view
and renew items currently checked out, and view,
place,
or cancel hold requests. There are improve-
ments to user-defined search windows and the
abil-
ity to save retrived records.
• • •
At the frontier of library automation and the World
Wide Web, a decision has been taken to impart a
common look and feel to all the Web-based services
supplied by EBSCO.
EBSCO plans to link the citations contained in about
50 abstracting and indexing databases currently
supported by EBSCOhost to the full-text articles
convered by the licenses to both EBSCOhost and
EBSCO
Online.
The company also plans to provide
print holdings data for end users and a linking fea-
ture utilizing data in the 856 field of the MARC record
from Web-enabled Online Public Access
Catalogues. Such a link will enable users to search
from their institution's OPAC, and link directly to
available full text on the Web using one of EBSCO's
online services.
Contacts
EBSCO
10 Estes Street, PO Box 682, Ipswich, MA 01938,
USA.
Tel:
+1 (978) 356 6500
Fax:
+1
(978) 356 5640
E-mail: ep@epnet.com
http://www.ebsco.com
GEAC
320 Nevada Street, Newtonville, MA 02160, USA
Tel:+1 (617) 965 6310
Fax:+1 (617) 969 1928
E-mail: info@geac.com
http://www.library.geac.com
FOCUS
news
Library
Automation
The Electronic Library, Vol. 16, No. 3, June 1998 181
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