12 September 2007
Copac: Get More For Free
Copac is the national union catalogue which gives free access to the merged online catalogues of the members of the Consortium of Research Libraries (CURL) including major research libraries, the British Library, the National Library of Wales and the National Library of Scotland.
It also gives access to a number of specialist collections such as the National Art Library at the V&A. It is funded by the JISC and hosted by Mimas which is based at the University of Manchester.
Thanks to the Challenge Fund, an initiative funded jointly by the British Library, CURL and the Research Information Network (RIN), twelve new libraries are being added to the database. The new libraries have been chosen for their value to researchers, their uniqueness and the ease of access to their collections.
Two of the collections, University of Exeter’s Arabic and Special Collections and Lambeth Palace Library, have already been added with the rest to follow by Spring 2008. The University of Exeter’s Arabic collections comprise the Arab World Documentation Unit and the Middle East collection. The Middle East Collection is strong in most areas of Islamic studies especially religion, philosophy, history, Arabic literature and social sciences. The Arab World Documentation Unit covers all aspects of life in the Arabian countries plus Iran. The major strengths of the special collections are mediaeval and early modern history, nineteenth century studies and history of popular culture, and twentieth century literary and historical studies.
Lambeth Palace Library is the historic library of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the principal library and record office for the history of the Church of England. Whilst the focus is ecclesiastical history it also provides rich resources for many topics from history of art and architecture to colonial and Commonwealth history as well as notable resources for researching English economic, social and political history. It is also a valuable source for researching local history and genealogy.
The remaining collections to be added are the University of Essex’s Latin American collection, the Women’s Library, the University of Leicester’s Special and Local History collections, the Institute of Education, the Royal Academy of Music, St Andrews University complete catalogue, the Natural History Museum, the City of London Guildhall library and archives, the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew and the Tate Gallery.
The expansion is the latest in a number of developments. In March this year a new version of Copac was released with a completely redesigned interface and database. New features include the ability to ‘subscribe’ to searches via an RSS feed which alert you to new records and changes to existing records which match your search. If you are part of an institution which has Open URL access you will be able to select a link to see local options you can use to find out whether you have access to the item found on Copac.
Copac can be accessed at http://copac.ac.uk
For more information about the libraries to be added visit:
http://www.copac.ac.uk/libraries/forthcoming/
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