A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical or digital access materials, and may be a physical location or a virtual space, or both. A library's collection can include printed materials and other physical resources in many formats such as DVD, CD and cassette as well as access to information, music or other content held on bibliographic databases.
The online public access catalog (OPAC), now frequently synonymous with library catalog, is an online database of materials held by a library or group of libraries. Online catalogs have largely replaced the analog card catalogs previously used in libraries.
WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions, in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the OCLC member libraries collectively maintain WorldCat's database, the world's largest bibliographic database. The database includes other information sources in addition to member library collections. OCLC makes WorldCat itself available free to libraries, but the catalog is the foundation for other subscription OCLC services. WorldCat is used by librarians for cataloging and research and by the general public.
The UK Web Archive is a consortium of the six UK legal deposit libraries which aims to collect all UK websites at least once each year.
The Archives Hub is a Jisc service, and is freely available to all. It provides a cross-search of descriptions of archives held across the United Kingdom, in over 320 institutions, including universities, colleges, specialist repositories, charities, businesses and other institutions. It includes over 1,000,000 descriptions of archive materials on all manner of subjects, which represents over 30,000 archive collections. It also describes content available through topic-based websites, often created as a result of digitisation projects.
Jisc is a United Kingdom not-for-profit company that provides network and IT services and digital resources in support of further and higher education institutions and research as well as not-for-profits and the public sector.
Research Libraries UK (RLUK) comprises 32 university libraries, 3 national libraries, and the Wellcome Collection in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Its aim is to increase the ability of research libraries to share resources among themselves. The holdings of these libraries provide the basis of the Copac online catalogue.
Intute was a free Web service aimed at students, teachers, and researchers in UK further education and higher education. Intute provided access to online resources, via a large database of resources. Each resource was reviewed by an academic specialist in the subject, who wrote a short review of between 100 and 200 words, and described via various metadata fields what type of resource it was, who created it, who its intended audience was, what time-period or geographical area the resource covered, and so on. As of July 2010, Intute provided 123,519 records. Funding was stopped in 2011, and the site closed.
A union catalog is a combined library catalog describing the collections of a number of libraries. Union catalogs have been created in a range of media, including book format, microform, cards and more recently, networked electronic databases. Print union catalogs are typically arranged by title, author or subject ; electronic versions typically support keyword and Boolean queries. Union catalogs are useful to librarians, as they assist in locating and requesting materials from other libraries through interlibrary loan service. They also allow researchers to search through collections to which they would not otherwise have access, such as manuscript collections.
EDINA is a centre for digital expertise, based at the University of Edinburgh as a division of the Information Services Group.
The British Institute of Organ Studies (BIOS) is a British organisation and registered charity which aims to promote study and appreciation of all aspects of the pipe organ. Further, it acts as a lobbying body to raise awareness of organ issues with appropriate statutory bodies. Membership is open to all.
The Serials Union Catalogue, or SUNCAT, was a freely available source of information about serials holdings in the United Kingdom, for the UK research community.
Archival research is a type of research which involves seeking out and extracting evidence from archival records. These records may be held either in collecting institutions, such as libraries and museums, or in the custody of the organization that originally generated or accumulated them, or in that of a successor body. Archival research can be contrasted with (1) secondary research, which involves identifying and consulting secondary sources relating to the topic of enquiry; and (2) with other types of primary research and empirical investigation such as fieldwork and experiment.
The JISC Digitisation Programme was a series of projects to digitise the cultural heritage and scholarly materials in universities, libraries, museums, archives, and other cultural memory organizations in the United Kingdom, from 2004 to 2010 The program was managed by the UK's Joint Information Systems Committee, the body that supports United Kingdom post-16 and higher education and research in support of learning, teaching, research and administration in the context of ICT.
Silke M. Ackermann is a German-born cultural historian and museum professional. She became a British Citizen in 2009 and has since held dual German-British citizenship. Ackermann currently serves as Director of the History of Science Museum at the University of Oxford, having been appointed in 2014 as the first female museum director at Oxford University. She is also co-founding director of the Oxford Centre for the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology and holds a Professorial Fellowship at Linacre College. In 2013 she was the first woman to be elected President of the Scientific Instrument Commission of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, a post she held until 2017. Ackermann is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Scientific Instrument Makers, and a Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers.
CORE is a service provided by the Knowledge Media Institute based at The Open University, United Kingdom. The goal of the project is to aggregate all open access content distributed across different systems, such as repositories and open access journals, enrich this content using text mining and data mining, and provide free access to it through a set of services. The CORE project also aims to promote open access to scholarly outputs. CORE works closely with digital libraries and institutional repositories.
Captain Henry Taprell Dorling (1883–1968) was a British sailor, author, and journalist who served in the Royal Navy during both World War One and World War Two, giving his marine fact and fiction a notable authenticity. His Pincher Martin, O.D. (1916) is widely referenced as the source for Pincher Martin (1956) by Nobel prizewinner William Golding. He wrote under the name Taffrail.
E-Theses Online Service (EThOS) is a bibliographic database and union catalogue of electronic theses provided by the British Library, the National Library of the United Kingdom. As of February 2022 EThOS provides access to over 500,000 doctoral theses awarded by over 140 UK higher education institutions, with around 3000 new thesis records added every month.
Library Hub Discover is a union catalog operated by Jisc. It replaces Copac and SUNCAT. Its user interface is centred around a simple search engine-like query box.
The University of York Library is the library service for students and staff at the University of York, UK.
