The eLib Collection Description Scheme

The eLib ‘clump’ projects are utilising the Z39.50 bibliographic retrieval protocol to build gateways to library OPACs in the UK, creating virtual union catalogues of university, national and public libraries. In order to facilitate large scale resource discovery, some of the projects are creating databases containing metadata for their libraries' collections. The creation and development of a standard scheme for cataloguing collections, as opposed to cataloguing individual items, is described here.