BREAKING THE SILENCE: NEWS OF SWALCAP'S LOCAL INTEGRATED LIBRARY SYSTEM

1986 heralds a period of significant change for SWALCAP, the Bristol‐based co‐operative, currently supplying centralised cataloguing and circulation systems to 23 Member libraries. Firstly, as of 1st January it ceases to be a consortium of libraries and becomes SWALCAP Library Services Ltd, a private company limited by shares: the shareholders are the existing members, or those of the membership who have elected to take shares in the new company. Secondly, the first quarter of 1986 will see the full launch of SWALCAP's local integrated library system which has been in development for the last 18 months. The first general public viewing is scheduled for the Bath Online Conference (see p.) in April. Development has been undertaken in conjunction with the System Working Group, comprising SWALCAP staff and representatives from member libraries, so that there has been a strong user input into the system design. Over the past few weeks, SWALCAP has been running a series of seminars to bring the members up to date with progress and to introduce them to those modules which are more or less fully developed, namely cataloguing, catalogue enquiry and circulation control. Public access and authority control will be available imminently, with acquisitions and serials control modules in the pipeline for 1986/87. The following pages take a look at the system to date as it has been shown to the SWALCAP membership. The account is, for the most part, based on a live demonstration of the system, with full system software and a database of 100,000 records; where simulations or other sources were used, this is made clear.