UNIverse

piloting virtual library facilities across Europe

October 1996 - March 1999

Funded under the EC Telematics for Libraries 4th Framework Programme (DG XIII).

Partners: The UNIverse consortium is led by Fretwell-Downing and involves organisations from seven member states. It combines some of Europe's leading developers of networked information systems with influential practitioners from the world of academic and national libraries - including the British Library, the Greek National Library and the Irish Library Council.

Aim: UNIverse is based on the concept of the "virtual union catalogue" for libraries. It will build on the work of previous EC-funded projects to allow search and retrieve over a large number of databases with different record structures and different languages. It aims to offer users a one-stop environment to complete their document requests and where applicable to take delivery in digital form. One of the key technical objectives is to enable duplicate records from a search across different databases to be presented in a single list, as though one database had been searched.

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