JISC has announced the release of SUNCAT. From today's press release: 'The contents of journals and other serials represent an immense and invaluable resource for researchers in all subjects. However, the task of identifying, locating and accessing these serials, held by institutions across the UK, has up to now presented a significant challenge. The national Serials Union Catalogue (SUNCAT) was today launched to help meet this challenge. Funded by JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) and the RSLP (Research Support Libraries Programme) since 2003, and developed by EDINA at the University of Edinburgh in partnership with Ex Libris, the catalogue has achieved a critical mass of some 3.7m records. These are made up of records from national libraries, the largest UK academic library collections and international databases, such as the ISSN World Serials database and CONSER, the database of MARC21 serials records available from the Library of Congress. As a centralised catalogue of high-quality bibliographic records, SUNCAT will also provide librarians with a means by which local records can be upgraded through access to standardised high-quality records....SUNCAT will also be developed to integrate fully into the emerging national information environment, supporting and contributing to work in the areas of e-theses, repositories, electronic subscription information, online access to journals and electronic document delivery, amongst others. As such, SUNCAT will further develop as a key tool for researchers, librarians and others within colleges, universities and beyond.'
Posted by
Peter Suber at 2/15/2005 08:02:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
