18 July 2019
Jisc is launching three new library services on 31 July 2019. Library Hub Discover, Library Hub Compare, and Library Hub Cataloguing are intended to make it easier for UK higher education libraries and researchers to access, discover and manage academic collections.
The Library Hub Discover service, which is open to all, is designed to make academic library collections visible through web searches, which means they are available to a wider audience. The service will feature more than 100 library catalogues at launch but will keep growing over time. Based on data held by the National Bibliographic Knowledgebase (NBK), it is the most comprehensive aggregation of UK academic, national, and specialist library metadata available and replaces the selective coverage of Jisc’s Copac and SUNCAT services, which are being retired at the same time as the new Library hub services are launched.
The Library Hub Compare service and Library Hub Cataloguing, developed in partnership with OCLC, should help library staff and collection managers to make more informed decisions about their holdings and to download high quality catalogue records for use in their local systems.
Jisc has provided library discovery and management tools to UK academic libraries for more than 20 years. The new Library hub suite of services has been developed in response to demand from the sector, which asked Jisc to provide services that will cope with the scale and scope of what will be required over the next 20 years.