JISC

During 1998, four projects began as part of the Large Scale Resource Discovery strand of the  JISC eLib Phase 3 programme. These have become colloquially known as “the clumps”, and comprise CAIRNS, M25 Link, Music Libraries Online (MLO) and RIDING. All four projects still exist, either as full live services or as advanced, well-used prototypes. In all cases, the original eLib grant has finished but development effort and maintenance continues at varying levels, either funded by local consortium subscriptions (CAIRNS, M25 and RIDING) or by small amounts of funding from elsewhere.

Copac is established as a core JISC service at MIMAS, and is a significant cornerstone of the JISC Information Environment. Based on the consolidated catalogue database of the CURL members, Copac offers a single interface to the bibliographic records of most of the major university research universities in the UK.

This project builds on the results of JISC’s eLib Phase 3 programme in the area of resource discovery.  It enhances the 'distributed' part of the JISC Information Environment, in that it aims to bring together in a virtual way distributed catalogue to offer richer search and retrieve possibilities for users. This is an example of the JISC vision which states that 'it is not a centralised service and does not rely on a single dedicated entry point'.

The primary aims of this project are split into two groups, due to the organisation of the teams carrying out the work. Firstly, M25 and Copac will investigate the feasibility of inter-linking between a very large physical union catalogue and a large virtual union catalogue. A number of issues will be included in this investigation such as comparative speed of searching, de-duplication, results ranking and also comparing the accuracy both of the records themselves and the results.

The second area of work undertaken by CAIRNS and RIDING will look at collection level description schemas in relation to both the clumps and Copac. Issues such as target selection in clumps and developing guidelines for cataloguing and indexing practices are also included. The project outcomes will feed into any potential development of a UK National Union Catalogue.