Consorci de Biblioteques Universitaries de Catalunya Progress Report 2001

1. InstitutionConsorci de Biblioteques Universitaries de Catalunya

C. Gran Capita, 2-4 Ed. Nexus
Barcelona,  08034  Spain

ELAG Contact Person:
Mr. Ramon Ros (Head of computer department) , rros@cbuc.es , phone:93 205 64 64 , fax:93 401 58 31

Institution Type: Consortium

Mission Statement
The Consorci de Biblioteques Universitaries de Catalunya (CBUC) aims to improve library services through cooperation. CBUC members are the 9 public universities in Catalonia plus the national library. It started in 1996 running the CCUC Union Catalog and now comprises several cooperative databases and library improve programs.
 

2. Library automation
1. In general HW/SW
   The Union Catalog server is an HP3000 currently supporting 200 simultaneous cataloguing users and more than 2.5 million bibliographic searches per year (not hits). The TOC database is hosted by a Sun E450 and other machines (Sun E10, Sun E450, Sun E3500, HP N4000 and Linux) support the Thesis database, web server and gateway and digital library.
3. Union Catalogue
1. Software used
   Classic VTLS. Most intitution members also use VTLS but this is not a requirement to be a participant cataloguing institution in the CCUC.
2. New features
   In April 2001 we started the OCLC copy cataloguing. An in house program allows the cataloguer to directly import records from OCLC to CCUC and convert them from USMARC to CATMARC.
4. Digital Library
1. Based on your own production of digital documents
   From september 2000 we have the Thesis database which comprises the whole production of doctoral Thesis produced in the universities of Catalonia. The electronic format is PDF and the software is from the NDLTD consortium.
2. Based on external sources
   We have agreements with some important distributors and offer different on-line full text journals and databases such as Emerald, Business source Elite, Medline, Inside, IEL, etc.
5. New in-house databases
   We also have the Table of Content database with now lists more than 7.000 journal titles and indexes more than 2 million articles. The information is both loaded from external sources (distributors) and added directly from the libraries. The software was build inside the CBUC.
6. Special web services
   ILL requests forms were added from the TOC and CCUC databases to directly ask for documents.
   A feature was aded to the VTLS software to allow the users navigate from the Union Catalog to the local catalogs.
7. Other important projects
   A near future project will be the creation of an electronic resource database probably based on the CORC experience in OCLC.

Barcelona, 14 May 2001