University of Toronto Library Automation Systems

UTLAS has developed and is developing a set of automated services which are directed at meeting the following criteria: (i) provision of an easily‐learned system for the sharing of catalogue and authorities records on a network facility which is economically usable over a wide geographical area; (ii) system flexibility to permit the recording of many types of bibliographic material; (iii) provision to accommodate bibliographic material from a variety of sources, and to permit the integration of records into usable databases with a clear identification of the source of each record; (iv) flexible facilities for selection and merging of material from multiple sources for the purpose of generating library products such as catalogue cards, bookform and microform catalogues and online enquiry; (v) provision of effective system control to relate each machine‐readable database to its counterpart published catalogue and updates; and (vi) provision of economic network facilities, such that system users may elect a high degree of local management of fully developed collections of machine‐readable records.