UK national library catalogue nears completion

FABLibraries, the UK’s national public library catalogue has now been rolled out to all libraries that subscribe to UnityUK (the UK's nationwide network for resource sharing), as part of a ‘limited release’.

The intent is to give UnityUK member libraries a chance to offer feedback.  When this stage is complete, Britain's first freely-accessible national online library catalogue for public use is expected to launch. 
 
‘We are very excited to be moving into this final testing phase.   We are getting very positive feedback from the participating libraries, as well as requests to include fuller catalogue data. When FABLibraries is officially launched this year, web users will be able to view the holdings of 150 UK public libraries, equating to approximately nine million bibliographic records and 50 million holdings,’ explains Elisabeth Robinson, product manager of OCLC, which is working on the project.