UK NACSIS-CAT project successfully finished its second phase in March 1995. The final report was completed last April. As a result, the six UK participant libraries of this project (Japanese sections of the British Library, Oxford, Cambridge, London, Sheffield, and Stirling University libraries) continue to use NACSIS-CAT as overseas member libraries. The second phase, originally scheduled for two years from April 1992, had been extended by a year to March 1995.
The overall aim of the project was to contribute to the compilation of the union catalogue (of Japanese publications in UK) at Cambridge University through input of NACSIS-CAT records from the participants. The first phase, which started in 1990, had to concentrate on connecting the UK libraries to NACSIS services through NACSIS-BL link, BLNET and JANET.
The second phase was intended as the implementation phase, and the following specific objectives were identified:
During the last year, remarkable progress was made. A romanised union catalog at Cambridge became available in April 1995, though the monthly update is not yet made due to a small problem concerning FTP. CD-ROM union catalogues are in service at Cambridge and Oxford. Cambridge uses this CD-ROM as kanji OPAC also. Oxford developed their kanji OPAC with Allegro, which is a PC based library automation system, using own developed Japanese front-end processor.
The new objective in the extension year was not successful enough. Though there was little technical difficulties when the Internet connection was introduced and tested in April 1994. However, from around October 1994, the connection becomes less reliable and frequent time out is observed during NACSIS-CAT session through internet link. The reason of this problem is presumably recent heavy usage of Internet. NACSIS is searching the way to solve this problem.
As a result of this project, NACSIS-CAT was proved to be an effective tool for cataloging of Japanese publications, not only for Japanese libraries but also for UK and possibly other overseas libraries. Although some shortages for international services, such as operation hours, training program and user interface, were observed in the project. Above all, NACSIS could acquire invaluable experience of overseas services from this project. The final report will be published in the next NACSIS bulletin.