National & Research Libraries

United States and Canada

World and Multinational

Europe

United States and Canada

Library of Congress Catalog Online: "The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world, with more than 115 million items on approximately 530 miles of bookshelves. The collections include some 17 million books, 2 million recordings, 12 million photographs, 4 million maps, and 50 million manuscripts." The LC web site also links to THOMAS (US Congress and legislative information) and the Copyright Office.
UWF also has these older Library of Congress printed catalogs (located in the UWF Book Stacks):

Association of Research Libraries Information Servers

Arranged alphabetically by keyword in name, gives access to the information servers of the more than 120 ARL member libraries, who are the leading research and academic libraries in North America.

US Libraries by State (Yale University gopher)

Academic libraries, alphabetically by state. Access is via telnet, and each library listing has an instructions icon plus a computer icon for the actual connection. Many libraries listed already provide web access to their catalogs, but there are quite a few who still don't. Thus, this site is still useful.

National Library of Canada Online Catalog

World and Multinational

AcqWeb's Library Catalogs and Bibliographic Utilities: Provides links to important metalists of major library catalogs worldwide, gateway sites, plus to individual large catalogs such as the Library of Congress, Bibliothèque Nationale, British Library, COPAC (CURL), and others.
Eureka (RLG): A fundamental resource. Eureka contains the combined holdings of the major research libraries around the world who are members of RLG (the Research Libraries Group consortium, founded in 1974). RLG currently has 161 member libraries worldwide.; The list of RLG member libraries, with access to their individual web servers, is at the RLG web site.
HYTELNET (Peter Scott): "Housed by Northern Lights Internet Solutions," maintained by Peter Scott. A worldwide listing of catalogs of major libraries of many types which are accessible only through telnet rather than a web interface. Complements and is similar to Scott's Library Web-Based OPACS site in organization, with geographical index by country and a vendor index identifying the libraries' automated system providers. HYTELNET and Libweb together provide probably the most comprehensive organized access to the leading research and academic libraries of the world. A 1997 note on the web site says HYTELNET is closing and will be replaced by something else, but this hasn't happened yet; the site is still being actively maintained.
Library of Congress WWW Gateway to Other Catalogs: Alphabetical list of links to library catalogs in the US and other countries, from the Library of Congress web site. Included are other national and research libraries, US state libraries, large public libraries, academic research libraries, and various consortia (including lists of the member libraries).
Library Web-Based OPACS (Peter Scott): "Hosted by Northern Lights Internet Solutions, maintained by Peter Scott." A very important site, similar to Libweb, but with more types of libraries and a richer array of links to other sources. Provides links to catalogs of major libraries worldwide. Has three worldwide indexes: geographical by country; type of library (12 categories); and by vendors of the libraries' automated systems. Beyond identifying libraries with particular systems, there is also a separate page with links to all the vendors' home pages. In addition, the site links to HYTELNET, Peter Scott's worldwide listing of libraries requiring telnet access to their catalogs. Libweb and HYTELNET together provide probably the most comprehensive organized access to the leading research and academic libraries of the world.
Libweb: Library Servers on WWW (Peter Scott): Maintained by Berkeley Digital Library SunSITE, which is sponsored by the UC Berkeley Library and Sun Microsystems, Inc. "Libweb currently lists over 3000 pages from libraries in over 90 countries." A very important site which provides links to major libraries of all types worldwide. Organized geographically, i.e., United States and other regions of the world. US has six sections: academic, public, national & library organizations, state, regional consortia, and special & school. Boolean keyword searching of the entire list is also provided, as are links to other sites and gateways.
National Library Catalogues Worldwide: Useful site maintained by the University of Queensland Library in Australia. Arranged alphabetically by country. Entries include web or telnet links as required by the host library site, and usually also provide any necessary instructions and passwords for getting into the catalog once the site is reached.
Web Accessible National and Major Libraries (IFLANET): IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions) "is an organization of world-wide scope representing more than 1600 members in almost 150 countries all over the world." Links to national library catalogs around the world, by country. Also links to a large variety of other library-related information, including library addresses, organizations and resources, library policies, etc.
WorldCAT (FirstSearch): A primary resource for locating information about books and any other publication format. WorldCat provides access to the entire database of OCLC (Online Computer Library Center). OCLC is the "world's largest consortium," with about 35,000 member libraries in the US and 65 other countries. The OCLC database currently has over 43 million records reflecting the combined holdings of all these libraries, and is the largest such database in the world.

Europe

British Library Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC 97)
Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Catalogue des Imprimés en Libre-Accès (BN-OPALE PLUS)
UWF also has these older British and French printed catalogs (located in the UWF Book Stacks):
COPAC (CURL, UK and Ireland): A union catalog of the 16 member libraries of CURL (Consortium of University Research Libraries, i.e., the major academic research libraries in the UK and Ireland). Members include the libraries of Cambridge University, Oxford University, University of Manchester, School of Advanced Study and each of its constituent libraries, University of London, Trinity College (Dublin), and other institutions. Each member library home page may also be accessed individually.
Deutsche Bibliothek (Germany): Navigation in German.
Gabriel, Gateway to Europe's National Libraries: Links to 40 national libraries in 38 European countries, members of CENL (Conference of European National Librarians).
ECLAS (European Commission union catalog): Navigation in English or French. ECLAS is "the European Commission union catalogue referencing holdings of a network of libraries, called Réseaubib [launched in 1994 for common management of acquisitions and other functions]. In addition to the Central Library, more than 25 smaller specialised libraries and documentation centres participate in this co-operation network." The database consists of "ca. 180,000 completed catalogue records in the domain of European affairs; about 7,000 new records are added annually."

The EC Central Library also belongs to EUROLIB (European Community and Associated Institutions Library Co-operation Group), created in 1988 and formalized in 1997, which is the "grouping of European Union institutional libraries." The 19 EUROLIB member libraries and their web sites are listed at http://europa.eu.int/comm/dg10/libraries/eurolib/directory/index_en.htm (there is no EUROLIB union catalog).

Dan North, Acquisitions Librarian
University of West Florida Library
Date Last Updated: August 2000