[LINK] Bath books & trove replacing LA

[Paul Koerbin]

Message posted on behalf of Debbie Campbell, Director Collaborative Services at the NLA

Paul Koerbin



There was a recent message sent to this list about 'bath books', which raised two issues.

Firstly, the phrase 'bath books' is being used in error. It appears next to an International Standard Book Number in many MARC records sent to the National Library by the Thorpe-Bowker ISBN agency. The National Library and Thorpe-Bowker are investigating the issue to find a solution. The records appear in the National Library's catalogue, at http://catalogue.nla.gov.au; the national bibliographic utility Libraries Australia, at http://librariesaustralia.nla.gov.au and Trove, the new public search service at http://trove.nla.gov.au. When the solution is implemented, it will flow through to all three services.

Secondly, Trove was introduced to the general public in November 2009. Trove replaced the free Libraries Australia search service, accessible to the general public since 2006, but it does not replace the suite of services also known as Libraries Australia which includes the national bibliographic utility, and which the National Library hosts to support the workflows of Australian libraries.

Trove ia an ambitious attempt to construct a national 'information portal'. While there are many examples of worldwide portals with extensive coverage, the National Library is not aware of any others that include content from such a variety of sources, including library, archive and museum collections, university repositories, digitised newspapers, web archives and online biographical databases. More information about the scope and functionality of Trove may be found under its 'Site news' and 'About' tabs, and at www.nla.gov.au/pub/gateways/issues/101/story01.html.

Please send any questions you may have through the 'Contact us' options in Trove or Libraries Australia, and we hope you enjoy using our new service.

Regards,

Debbie Campbell
Director, Collaborative Services Branch
National Library of Australia

Parkes Place
Canberra ACT 2600
Australia

e: dcampbel at nla.gov.au;  p: +61 2 6262 1673