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177 1 6 THE DIGITAL LIBRARY OF CATALONIA Lluís Anglada, Ángel Borrego and Núria Comellas The creation of the Digital Library of Catalonia The Consortium of Academic Libraries of Catalonia (CBUCwas formally set up in 1996 with the aim of creating and maintaining the collective catalogue of the universities of Catalonia (CCUC) (Anglada 1999) and soon extended its activities to related fields, such as setting up interlibrary loan in 1997, and the creation of a database of journals’ tables of contents in 1998. Its first experience of joint purchasing was not of electronic information, but of barcodes for automating library loans. After that, the Consortium drew up a catalogue of the databases subscribed to by the member libraries of the CBUC in order to determine the degree of duplication in the purchases made by them with a view to negotiating discounts. In late 1997 the CBUC presented the project of consortial purchasing of databases to the vice-presidents responsible for research who approved it and expressed their interest in including electronic journals in the joint purchases. As an umbrella for its activities, the CBUC decided to create the Digital Library of Catalonia (BDC), which was to “provide a common core of electronic information for all users of the libraries of the CBUC. The BDC project was presented to the government of Catalonia in 1998 and funding was obtained for the period 1999 to 2001. The first licences were purchased in late 1998 and the first information resources subscribed to by the Consortium were made available in early 1999. These were local and international databases and the e-journals of Academic Press. The first products were purchased with government funding, but it was soon discovered that for further purchases the members of the CBUC would have to provide their own funding The initial selection criteria for determining which products could be licensed consortially were the interests of members, the conditions of access and the cost, but over the years the publishers’ pricing models turned out to be the major factor. Some products which clearly met the first two conditions failed to meet the third and therefore had to be rejected. Growth and evolution of the BDC Due to the technological development and the situation of the information market in 1998, the majority opinion was that the products included in the BDC would be bibliographic databases subscribed to only by members of the CBUC and installed locally on servers of the consortium. The situation evolved rapidly, however, and the period of creation and consolidation of the BDC between 1998 and 2001 showed us that the BPDG_opmaak_12072010.indd 177 13/07/10 11:51 Lluís Anglada, Ángel Borrego and Núria Comellas 178 priority for joint licensing would be e-journals, that other institutions in addition to the universities of the Consortium were interested in joint licensing, and finally that the time for local installations had ended and that at the start of the 21st century information would be accessed by remote connection to the Internet. Nowadays a digital library means online access to full text and other sorts of digital objects, but in Catalonia in the late 1990s it meant databases on CD-ROM. Projects involving access to journals had been very limited in scope (for instance, no European library was able to participate in Elsevier’s TULIP project). However, peer reviewed e-journals grew from about 100 in 1995 to a significant number by 2000. The great step forward of the time was the local installation of bibliographic databases which could be accessed through a LAN or WAN network. However, the priority soon shifted towards full-text resources –mainly journals but also books. During the first few years of the BDC the licences were only for the member institutions of the CBUC, but they soon started to include universities which were not members. These were of two types: private universities in Catalonia and public universities which were geographically close to those of the CBUC. The inclusion of these institutions in the joint licences led to the creation of a new type of member, an associated member, which initially participated only in the licensing but soon started to participate in other cooperative activities.This stage of licensing all resources for all members came to an end in 2005, when some resources began to be licensed only for members which wished to subscribe to them. To complete the overview of the evolution of the BDC, we must mention two aspects...

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