When the Higher Education Library Information Network of Rhode Island transferred members' bibliographic data into a shared online public access catalog (OPAC), 10% of the University of Rhode Island's monograph records were missing. This article describes the consortium's attempts to retrieve records from the database and the effectiveness of…

This theme issue discusses the Illinois Library and Information Network (ILLINET). Topics addressed include network components, the interlibrary loan code, the resource sharing union catalog, the OCLC users' group, OCLC's EPIC service, access to indexing services, SILO (Serials of Illinois Libraries Online) members, and excerpts from the…

This report on the Automated Library Information Control System (ALIS) of the National Technological Library of Denmark focuses on the circulation control functions of the integrated, distributed processing system, which also functions as an online catalog for a bibliographic database of approximately 120,000 records with library location codes.…

Presents the results of a survey of academic libraries belonging to the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) concerning the availability and accessibility of OCLC (via dedicated or dial access terminals) for use by reference personnel. The methodology of the survey is described and data are presented in five tables. (JL)

A practical system for producing a union catalog of titles in the collections of the Library of Congress Division for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (DBPH), its regional network, and related agencies from a machine-readable data base is presented. The DBPH organization and operations and the associated regional library network are analyzed.…

A distributed union catalog is a network of bibliographic systems that cooperate to enable their users to discover sites that hold copies of known items. Some participating systems will be traditional union catalogs, others will be single sites with comprehensive collections, and others will be local or regional resource sharing systems. A…

This discussion of the use of authority control to ensure consistency of headings in machine-readable and card catalogs highlights the basic concepts and rationale of authority control and library catalogs, and efforts of the Library of Congress and bibliographic utilities. Six references and causes of name variations are appended. (EJS)

The virtual Canadian union catalog (vCuc) project is a project among Canadian libraries to use Z39.50 (an information protocol standard) for searching distributed individual library catalogs and union catalogs. This paper summarizes the major technical, vendor, bibliographic data, and administrative issues that must be resolved before the…

Explores the qualities of bibliographic and object entities that contribute to the similarities and differences in the data describing them and the possibility of cooperation between indexers of art objects and indexers of bibliographic information. The discussion covers the role of authority control as the linking component between bibliographic…

This paper reports on the development of an online union catalog of serials using OCLC by the Central New York Library Resources Council. The project, now in the third of four years, is converting from a hard copy union catalog of serials to an online catalog that will have the important advantage of immediate update. Using the OCLC interlibrary…

Describes online catalog research being conducted in Europe in the areas of interaction and interface design, subject access, functional improvement through the application of information retrieval techniques, and library networks. Three operational online catalogs, not available outside Europe, are discussed. (30 references) (CLB)

OCLC is a computer network system providing an online union catalog and cataloging, interlibrary loan, serials control, name-address directory, acquisitions, and circulation control services to over 4000 user terminals linked together by dedicated leased telephone lines or by dial access systems. OCLC users have at their fingertips online files of…

This essay focuses on use of the Library of Congress Subject Headings system in online catalogs for the retrieval of information by subject. Among the topics addressed are differences among catalog forms (card, microform, and computer); user interface with different forms of catalog; the types of subject indexes employed in present online…

Describes an information retrieval system developed at Bell Laboratories to create and maintain a variety of different but interrelated databases, and to provide controlled access to these databases. The components discussed include the interfaces, indexing rules, display languages, response time, and updating procedures of the system. (6 notes…

Explores relationships between holdings data input into an online catalog and the output, including specific housing location, call number, size information, full-piece-specific hierarchy and enumeration, status of piece, and bibliographic or local notes. Record structure for holdings segment of Triangle Research Libraries Network online catalog…