Abstract
From its small beginnings in 1981 of six pilot users and the National Library of Australia (NLA), the Australian Bibliographic Network (ABN) has grown to be a truly national system, with 1,315 users at May 1995. The National Bibliographic Database has expanded to over 11 million records and 22 million holdings statements. It includes records from the USA, the UK, Canada, New Zealand, Singapore and Vietnam. It has come to be the single union list of holdings of Australian libraries, and the first point of reference for the majority of interlibrary loan transactions. The ABN is seen as both an NLA business and a cooperative undertaking of Australian libraries. Management consists of a Network Committee, which advises the Director General of NLA on all aspects of operation, and a Standards Committee, whose role is to make recommendations to NLA on cataloguing standards for the network. Annual Users' Meetings are held. Since 1987 NLA has been developing a database host for Australian libraries called OZLINE, in parallel with ABN. In 1990 it was decided to go for complete redevelopment using a text retrieval product and an industry standard Relational Database Management System. Following discussions with the National Library of New Zealand, which had indicated broadly similar requirements, it was agreed that the two libraries would jointly seek a system. The Australian service is to be known in future as WORLD 1.
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