Union Catalog/ILL

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OPALS union catalog empowers libraries in a region, district, or consortium to share their resources. Some OPALS union catalogs manage millions of holdings. The union catalog integrates an almost paperless inter-library loan system. Click on links to view ILL tutorials.

These union catalogs are an excellent source of MARC bibliographic records. Librarians consult the catalog for collection development ideas and to compile reading and topic lists for their communities.

Digital / eBook Resources Union Catalogs

OPALS union catalog can be used to manage digital resources acquired for all libraries within a region. This union catalog can implement “Digital Rights Management” where a designated number of simultaneous views have been purchased, regional rights where a common authentication provides access to those resources for all library members within that region, or unlimited access to OER (Open Education Rights) or Creative Commons licensed resources. The digital / eBook resources union catalog can be searched directly and integrated with a discovery search which includes regional and local print, digital and eBook resources.

History & Implementations

The “SCOOLS”  initiative pioneered OPALS’ open source library automation community. Six New York State School Library Systems developed a union catalog to provide Web-based, almost paperless, managed interlibrary loan services for approximately 300 schools in their regions. The database now houses more than a million titles (3 million plus holdings), and uses the Internet to communicate and manage the ILL process. In New York State, 29  School Library Systems now use OPALS’ union catalog to provide resource sharing and cataloging resources to over 2500 libraries.

 

 

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    United States
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    Canada
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    Germany
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    Brazil
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    Haiti
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    Saudi Arabia
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    Jordan
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    Mozambique
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    Angola
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    Madagascar
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    China
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    South Korea
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    South Korea