Eight articles describe the development, content, and structure of databases outside of the United States. Features discussed include library involvement, authority control, shared cataloging services, union catalogs, thesauri, abstracts, and distribution methods. Countries and areas represented are Latin America, Australia, the United Kingdom,…

Suggests ways of using computers to access the periodical literature including integrated public access catalogs; natural language display; network access to area union lists; links between indexing and location tools; access to journal content through the online catalog; broadened search capabilities; and remote user access with document…

Reviews the history of the network that supports the MELVYL online union catalog, describes current technological and policy issues, and discusses the role the network plays in integrating local automation, the union catalog, access to resource databases, and other initiatives. Sidebars by Mark Needleman discuss the TCP/IP protocol suite, internet…

In 1988, the Associated College Libraries of Central Pennsylvania received a grant to create a value-added, compact disk, union catalog from the U.S. Department of Education's College Library Technology and Cooperative Grants Program, Title II of the Higher Education Act. Designed to contain, in time, 2,000,830 records from 17 member library…

Three reports describe the standards and format to be used when contributing bibliographic records to MELVYL, the University of California (UC) online library catalog. The first report, which was revised and approved in May 1990, defines record format standards, record maintenance information standards, bibliographic fields, local data fields,…

The University of California Catalog and Periodicals databases each have over 20 separately contributing libraries, and records for the same work can enter the MELVYL system from different campus libraries. MELVYL's goal is to have one union record for each distinct edition of a work. To promote this goal, the University's Division of Library…

Developed at the beginning of the decade to serve as a union catalog for identifying the holdings in all University of California (UC) libraries, the MELVYL online catalog as of October 1989 contained 10 million holdings for over 5 million monographic titles of print and nonprint materials, and more than 1.2 million periodicals holdings which…

In 1988, the Missouri State Library offered microcomputers to Missouri public libraries to help them implement a retrospective conversion of their cataloging system to an online system called Bibliofile. The goal of the State Library was to create and maintain a Union Catalog for Missouri libraries. This guide provides Missouri library personnel…

This report briefly describes the background, software, tools used, and future directions of the Scholarly Services project which began in 1987 in the OCLC Office of Research. Several selected projects are reviewed to illustrate how sample data are extracted from the OCLC Online Union Catalog to support scholars in their research endeavors. The…

Discusses Oregon library automation projects, including Internet connectivity and a statewide multitype library network; a bibliographic information system with college and university libraries, including a union catalog; a Portland Area Library System that connects multitype libraries; and library staff training for the Internet. (LRW)

The National Library of Portugal undertook a leadership role in the development of the Portuguese Bibliographic database (PORBASE). The National Library defined cataloging standards and circulated them to Portuguese libraries to create a national catalog. PORBASE is a work in progress with ongoing technical projects and collaboration in the…

Reports on a survey measuring the performance of a merging algorithm used to generate the now-defunct ULM (Union List of Monographs) file for ALEPH, Israel's research library network. Discusses automatic detection and merging of duplicate bibliographic records, problems created by lack of a standard for Hebrew spelling, and methods for measuring…

Beginning this annual report is a letter to the OCLC membership from OCLC President and Chief Executive Officer, K. Wayne Smith. Statistical data are then presented in tables and/or graphs for OCLC programs and the system's financial status for fiscal years 1990/91 and 1989/90; the growth of the OCLC Online Union Catalog from 1971-1991 in terms of…

This overview of the use of technology in Missouri libraries describes the statewide bibliographic union database; elementary and secondary school projects using the Internet; full-text magazine database; remote electronic access; state depository program for digitizing resources; networks; electronic publishing; interlibrary loan; public and…

In 1988 the State of Missouri became involved in a project to develop a statewide bibliographic database in which a CD-PAC (a library catalog contained on CD-ROM) of the machine-readable records available from all types of libraries was produced. This study was conducted to assess the impact of the Missouri Statewide Bibliographic Database (MCAT),…