Abstract :
For almost 20 years, the National Bibliographic Network
(Red Nacional de Información Bibliográfica (RENIB)) has been the driving
force of library networking and resource sharing in Chile. Administratively
dependent on the National Library (Biblioteca Nacional) and also
physically located on its premises, RENIB has been very successful in
bringing together librarians from most of the major Chilean libraries and
in obtaining their cooperation for a number of important joint projects. The
most important among these was the development of the national union catalog,
which provides access to the holdings of all member libraries. An earlier
project resulted in the online union list of periodicals, developedjointly with the National Commission of Scientific and Technological Research
(Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica
(CONICYT)), which contains periodical records and detailed holdings
data of twenty-four universities. As the bibliographic database was being
planned, RENIB personnel anticipated the need for a centralized authorities
database in order to maintain consistency and uniform standards.
Participating libraries provided expert staff members who work jointly with
RENIB in teams that build and maintain headings for names, subjects, series,
uniform titles, and subdivisions and resolve conflicts. RENIB provided
documentation and training and, especially, the organizational
structure that now allows for continuing cooperation among institutions
that, traditionally, had not worked together. [Article copies available for a
fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-HAWORTH. E-mail
address: Website:
© 2002 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.]
Keywords :
Chile , union catalog , periodicals union list , authoritiesdatabase , RENIB
