COPETER Project

Library cooperation has always been assumed to be a good thing, but much thinking has focused on the means of cooperation rather than on the ends that cooperation is intended to serve, neglecting to fully explore other means of attaining those ends (M.B. Line, 1997).

Universiteit Maastricht is the youngest of the Dutch Universities: officially founded in 1976 it has since grown rapidly and now has more than 12 000 students in 7 faculties. The university is renowned for its Problem-Based Learning (PBL) approach. The university library supports this approach with its learning resource centres: the library has developed into an environment in which students ? individually and in groups ? actively pursue their study goals.

In order to promote the user orientation of the library, the university library has opted for a matrix organization, in which the hierarchical structure of departments is enhanced by faculty librarians. The latter act as "account managers" for the main library customers. The advantages and disadvantages of this structure will be highlighted.

The library is funded almost entirely by the faculties and other customers, with whom the library negotiates service contracts. The reasoning behind the use of service contracts will be outlined. The contracts specify the services to be provided in terms of both quantity and, increasingly, quality, and the costs of the services.

Strategic development is an important aspect of library management. The present strategy document distinguishes between four dimensions: the traditional, the digital, the teaching and the business-like library. The strategy document is now up for review.

Effective running of the library depends on its staff: their skills and know how, their awareness of their tasks and responsibilities, their motivation and their ability to respond to change and to the requirements of library management. Human resource management will be a key feature of library strategy in the coming years.

The Antwerp linking system links automatically databases with holding information and document delivery. Holding information is taken from ANTILOPE, the Belgian union catalogue. Once this process is finished, the user is given access to IMPALA, the Belgian electronic document ordering and supply system.

In this demo we look at the example of the ERL platform for databases where a link to Antilope and Impala is implemented. How can one start with a search in a database and end up with the full text article in his mailbox?

Both experience of SPbSPU library automation of and experience of the consortium development showed that the question of bibliographic record deduplication has become of crucial importance. The problems appeared during the card catalogues retroconversion as well as union catalogues development raised the complexity of deduplication process.

How to realize the mechanism of consolidated record creation?
How to evaluate its reliability and effectiveness?
What are specific features for the RUSMARC records?