The Spanish Library Church Union Catalogue: A Success Story

Abstract

La ABIE (the acronym for Spanish Church Librarians Association) is composed of technicians who work in any Church Library (universities, bishops, schools, monasteries, religious orders, seminaries…), so is an association of people, not institutions.

From its birth, one of the aim objectives was to implement a union catalog. There were some attempts in the past, but only in 2023 was the project successfully developed due to the difference in approach: the project would be simpler and had to be economically sustainable.

The first was achieved by opting only for a collective catalog with Vufind, leaving for later other functionalities that would lead us to a network of libraries. The second was achieved by establishing a very tight pricing policy for participation in the project. Libraries would pay an annual fee based on their size.

Currently, the union catalog, hosted in the URL catalogo.bibliotecaseclesiasticas.es has 6.2 registers and it is expected to reach 8 million, with great prominence of books on Religion, Theology, Humanities, Philosophy, History, and Social Sciences, from 16^th to 18^th centuries.