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The role, potential and interaction of networked catalogues and collection‐level description have recently been given emphasis in order that efficient resource discovery mechanisms, and the effective organisation of such resources, be facilitated within the UK's developing JISC information environment (IE). This article describes the work of CC‐interop, a JISC project, and related projects that inform the development of the IE and its ability to instantiate the functional model of online resource discovery to which JISC aspires. The article reviews the evolution of Z39.50 virtual union catalogue services and collection description services that preceded CC‐interop. The paper also discusses how such work is informing regional information environments, with particular reference to Scotland, and reveals how such local arrangements will benefit the wider JISC IE.

The reason for moving from one library system to another or from one generation of a library system to the next must be to improve the library’s ability to serve its users in a better and more effective way. An integrated library system, today, is very complex and multi‐moduled, which makes it difficult to distinguish one system from another. The article describes the long and bumpy road from the first generation VTLS classic library management system to the third generation VTLS Virtua at Lund University Libraries in Sweden.

This paper presents an overview of recent developments of the Co‐operative Online Bibliographic System and Services (COBISS) system in Slovenia. The COBISS system interconnects over 250 of the largest Slovenian libraries into a uniform Slovenian library information system. Also, COBISS is used by other independent library systems in some of the countries on the territory of the former Yugoslavia. The development of the COBISS shared cataloguing system and services runs parallel with the second software generation (COBISS2) and the new, object‐oriented technological platform (COBISS3). On COBISS2 the authority control and other services were introduced, whereas on COBISS3 the development of the interlibrary loan applications, acquisitions and other services is being carried out.

The Special Collections Department of Information Services at the University of Birmingham is currently using the CALM 2000 archives management system to enable management of the archives collections held by the university. The project to develop the OPAC side of CALM, enabling online and remote access to archive catalogue records, was initiated in September 2000 and completed at the end of May 2001. Reviews the history of the project, its various stages and final results. The Online Archive Catalogue at the University of Birmingham provides a significant research resource for users of information services as well as for the wider research community both nationally and internationally and may be accessed via the Internet at http://calm.bham.ac.uk/DServeA/

The union catalogue of monographs published before 1976 is maintained by the Dutch National Library in card form and contains five to six million records from 95 libraries. The extent to which these records need to be converted into machine‐readable form depends on several factors. Does the holding library still exist? Does the holding library participate in the Pica shared cataloguing system and has it converted its own card catalogue? Did the holding library convert its card catalogue using another library system? Are the cards in the union catalogue still reliable or did the holding library discard volumes from its collection without notifying the National Library? A feasibility study showed that the holding data of 59 libraries could be removed without any further processing; this amounts to 72.6 per cent of the cards. For the remaining 27.4 per cent of the cards from 36 libraries, priorities for the retrospective conversion of their data in the union catalogue were determined.

In this contribution the construction and organisation of the Co‐operative Online Bibliographic System and Services (COBISS) in Slovenia is described. It is dealt with in segments, covering the communication infrastructure, products and services of the central bibliographic utility and information retrieval services of the COBISS system, online public access local library catalogues and databases and the union (co‐operative) database. The organisation of the management of the development of the COBISS system as an association of members (libraries/information centres) is presented, and a model of co‐ordination between the COBISS system as the basis of the library information system and the system of scientific information and communication on the national level is considered.

Recent developments in Portuguese libraries are described with special attention to the application of new information technologies. The obvious modernisation largely described in the LIB‐2 update study has been mainly due to the automation of the National Library and the creation of the Online Union Catalogue. Main aspects and stages of this process which revolutionised Portuguese libraries are therefore emphasised.

Rich collections of conference proceedings are available in major science and technology (S & T) libraries in India. Unfortunately, no bibliographic tool is available to provide access to these information sources at national/regional level at present. Recognising this fact, Indian National Scientific Documentation Centre (INSDOC) has set up a project of creating a database and publishing a union catalogue of S & T conference proceedings available within the country. In the first phase, 30 major research and development institutions in the city of Bangalore, South India have been covered and the first volume of the union catalogue was published in 1991. It is printed using a desktop publishing system and the database is available on Unesco's CDS/ISIS mini‐micro version 2.3.

Belgium has a longstanding and rich tradition in library automation from the beginning in the late 1960s to the present day. Unlike, for instance, the Netherlands, it has no national centre for library automation such as PICA. Library automation in Belgium followed more or less the same richly diversed pattern as in Great Britain.

The DOBIS/LIBIS OPAC has been in active use at a number of installations for several years. Before describing the OPAC, this paper briefly describes the development and design of DOBIS/LIBIS as a whole. After sketches of several libraries using the OPAC, its menu‐guided and full‐screen search capabilities are described. Other OPAC facilities, such as the self‐service display of a borrower record, the sending of electronic mail to the library staff, and the multilingual capability of the system, are also covered.

When the Sport & Recreation Information Group (SPRIG) was founded in 1984 one of its aims was to improve bibliographic control of the literature of sport, physical education and recreation. The co‐operative exploitation of resources was also considered to be of great importance. To these ends SPRIG has, since its founding, intended to publish a United Kingdom Catalogue of Periodicals in Sport, Physical Education and Recreation, containing holdings of all libraries and institutions participating in SPRIG. During 1986 the group approached Leeds Polytechnic School of Library & Information Studies for assistance and, as a result, the system analysis and design for the project was undertaken by the author as part of the Computer Studies component of the Postgraduate Diploma Course at the School.