Historical Perspective of a Union Catalog in Chile: Authorities and Periodicals Perspectiva Historica del Catalogo Colectivo en Chile: Autoridades y Publicaciones Periodicas

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.]