Extending the missions of a union-catalog

Bernard Levrat

director of RERO

network of libraries from Western Switzerland

Centre Universitaire d'Informatique (CUI)

Université de Genève

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what is RERO ?
geographically
in numbers
historically
bringing librarians into the digital age
training to become friendly guides to information
putting all documentation "on-line"
cataloging Web resources
adding references to multi-media collections to the catalogs
digitizing text, sound, image and video
organizing appropriate servers for the long term
cataloging in union-catalogs
public funding

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


 

RERO in numbers
600 librarians in 180 research and references libraries to serve 35'000 students (4 universities) and 100'000 readers
2.7 million bibliographic records corresponding to 3.5 millions holdings
a union-catalog (both in "classic" VTLS and in VIRTUA) and 
5 synchronized local databases still in "classic" VTLS.

 

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History

June 1986 A group of libraries decide to join Lausanne to catalog their resources with SIBIL, a home-grown proprietary system
Spring 1994 RERO decides to migrate to full US-MARC and to VTLS for its union-catalog and its local databases.
Spring 1997 The whole system, including copy cataloging and EDIS, electronic distribution is operational
January 2000 RERO starts working with VIRTUA for cataloging and acquisitions

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cataloging on-line resources
 
real Internet connection   (skifahrer in Lötschental) 
real Internet connection   (voice of Jean Piaget)
in case we cannot connect

 

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There is some degree of cooperation among
Local authorities (city of Geneva, canton of Valais,...) are eager to promote their hidden treasures
Regional authorities tolerate that RERO divert some resources to catalog them.
Federal authorities have their own schemes piloted by the Swiss National Library to create a "sonothèque" and a collection of posters.
 
 

Thank you for your attention