Copac News

We are pleased to announce that the holdings of the Royal College of Music Library are now on Copac.

The Library contains a wealth of material, over 400,000 items, ranging from rare, early 16th-Century printed music to standard musical repertoire and from 78 rpm recordings to compact discs and DVDs. The collections of music literature include much rare material as well as all the major encyclopaedias, bibliographies, catalogues and standard works in most musical genres, as well as over 600 music periodical titles.

The addition of these holdings will greatly enhance the range of music material discoverable through Copac.

Labels: database updates, libraries

We are pleased to announce that the libraries of the National Trust are now live on Copac. This is the first time that the National Trust's catalogue has been available to search online.

The National Trust owns 140 historic libraries, containing around 230,000 titles, generally preserved in the places where they were originally assembled and read. Many are country house libraries, some collected by wealthy bibliophiles, others containing more practical everyday books, including rare provincial printing. Other collections reflect the interests of middle-class readers; some were assembled by literary figures, such as Kipling and Shaw.

Together these libraries provide an unparalleled resource for the study of the history of private book ownership in Britain and Ireland. The collections will be of interest to researchers from a wide range of disciplines, and include a huge variety of materials, from illuminated manuscripts to picture postcards.

For fuller details please see the National Trust's Books and Manuscripts collection webpages, or contact libraries@nationaltrust.org.uk. You can also see the National Trust's library page on Copac.

We are confident that exposure of these exciting resources will be of great benefit to the education and research communities.

Labels: database updates, libraries

We are pleased to announce that live circulation data is now available for the University of Bradford's Copac records. This enables users to see, at the point of searching Copac, whether the item they are interested in is available.

Labels: live circulation data

There is now a Copac search widget for iGoogle, enabling you to search Copac directly from your start page. You can choose to search:

• keyword
• title
• author
• subject
• ISBN/ISSN

Results will open in a new window, allowing you to continue working on your iGoogle page while your search results are loading.

All feedback welcome!

Labels: interface, search plugins, widgets

The Copac office will close on 24th December, and re-open on 4th January. The Copac service will be available over this period, but there will be no helpdesk support. Any queries sent over this period will be dealt with when we return.

The Copac team would like to wish all of our users a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!


Photo by Ashley Sanders

Labels: helpdesk

There will be no disruption to Copac on December 15th owing to
changes in the overall plans for the Mimas service hardware transition.
We will let you know when we have transition dates in the New Year.

Labels: maintenance

On Tuesday, 15 December 2009 (around 10:00am), we're moving the Copac website to new hardware. This is part of a major hardware upgrade programme in Mimas that will ensure we have the capacity and resilience to enhance all Mimas services.

Most users should not notice the change. However, logins to Copac using Shibboleth may be unavailable for several hours during the 15th December.

Please contact the Copac Helpdesk if you are unable to access Copac after 12:00pm on the 15th.

Labels: maintenance