About the project

What is a Union Electronic Catalog?

           The concepts of “corporate cataloging” and “union electronic catalog” are relatively new to our library practice and have developed only recently.

           Union catalogs (UC) are bibliographic catalogs, publications, or databases that reflect the collections of several organizations (libraries, information and library centers (ILC), information resource centers (IRC)) and indicate the location of documents using sigla or full names of these institutions.

           A union catalog provides users with the following opportunities:

  • to obtain information about the availability of publications in a particular library or in several libraries simultaneously;
  • access to a unified bibliographic database;
  • organization of online exchange of bibliographic records via the Internet in MARC (UZMARC) format between information and library institutions.

           The implementation of the Union Electronic Catalog (UEC) program ensures:

  • formation and development of local electronic catalogs in information and library institutions;
  • the possibility for participants to interact and use each other’s resources in forming the union catalog;
  • reduction of labor costs in cataloging through the use of ready-made bibliographic records from the UEC;
  • provision of fast and efficient bibliographic search;
  • development of exchange of information resources and collections between institutions;
  • creation of a unified information space of local catalogs;
  • development of linguistic support (synonym dictionaries, root word dictionaries, descriptor dictionaries, authority files) to improve search and indexing quality;
  • creation of tools and maintenance of bibliographic databases of the union catalog, logical models, and conceptual information;
  • обеспечение online access to databases via the standard WWW network;
  • organization of bibliographic information exchange between national and foreign libraries in MARC format.

           Expected results of the project:

  • increase in the volume of the union electronic catalog;
  • improvement of the quality of bibliographic records;
  • enhancement of information and library services for the population.

           All this contributes to improving the efficiency of libraries and expanding users’ access to information resources through the system of the Republican Center of the Union Electronic Catalog (RCUEC).