Bibliographic records :

 The bibliographic records in the Arabic Union Catalog (AUC) distinguish by their high quality and full homogeneity. This has achieved the highest degree of congruence with the international standards taking into account the most accurate specificities of Arabic information resources.

Numbers of records :

With the official start of the AUC, the number of bibliographic records was 310.000 records. Recently, by the beginning  of 2018, this numbers has reached 2.250.000 records. As libraries have increased their download and upload transactions, the numbers of these bibliographic records have been developed to exceed 400.000 records during 2017 , which reflects the intensive demand of national / international libraries to use AUC services.

 

Authority control :

The transmission of libraries catalogs from the traditional practices to the digital environment has led to an increasing need to unconventional tools of the authority control. But, Arabic libraries are still suffering from a severe shortage of such tools. Although, there are some local trials to develop these tools, they are not compatible with the digital environment. Additionally, these trials lack a policy of updating since they are individual efforts.

Therefore, the AUC administration has decided to create a set of authority lists in the digital environment to avoid the imperfections of the previous tools. These authority lists are consistent with MARC 21, LOC list and the characteristics of Arabic. Besides, these authority lists have benefited from all literature and tools published in the Arab World. The AUC administration also keeps updating these authority files. All of these are considered an institutional work which has the mechanism of continuity and development in comparison to individual works. The following is a brief demo of the authority lists:

  • The list of personal names: includes more than 400.000 personal names normalized in their formats and entries; In addition, cross references for unauthorized formats have been created.
  • List of organizations and meetings names: includes 70.000 records.
  • List of uniform titles: contains 30.000 records.
  • List of subject headings of natural sciences and geographic names: includes more than 250.000 subject headings and geographic names, which is the result of a priority list to more than 60.000 entries after normalizing, merging duplicates and adding new subject headings.