Technological convergance for access to hardcopy and softcopy collections by means of the UnibibliWeb Portal: the experience of CRUESP/Libraries Consortium.

The Consortium CRUESP/Libraries formed by the three São Paulo State Universities Library System, USP, UNESP, and UNICAMP, seeks to offer specialized services and products to the academic community. With the expanding of the available information sources to the Universities, researchers need to visit various sites from diverse information providers, possessing different access interfaces. This demands time for the user to know these interfaces, which are not always user-friendly, and utilize the same search terms numerous times. With the technological advance it has become evident the possibility of the creation of a unified search interface, using the international communication protocols such as Z.39.50, OpenURL, among others. In this manner, CRUESP/Libraries idealized a unified search portal to do simultaneous searches to information sources available to USP, UNESP, and UNICAMP. This portal is the UnibibliWeb, available at www.cruesp.gov.sp.br/bibliotecas, whose goal is help in the dissemination and access to information by the academic community. Besides the possibility of searching, the portal also provides a service entitled “Personal Library”, where the user can select and store material of interest, helping in the organization of relevant information for his or her academic activities. The current work shows the construction, evolution and consolidation of this product which is much used by the academic community of the state universities of São Paulo, Brazil and other countries.