Copac contains. c.33 million records representing the merged catalogues of major UK and Irish academic institutions, as well as all the UK National Libraries. The 'Libraries on Copac' page gives details of all the contributing institutions: http://copac.ac.uk/libraries/
For the latest news on Copac please see: http://copac.ac.uk/blog/
Main subject areas
Copac is multidisciplinary. There are records for materials ranging across the Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences, Sciences, and Medicine.
Academic level
Copac is aimed principally at Higher and Further education, but it contains details of materials suitable for all age and interest groups and has been designed to be easy to use.
Date range
c.1100 - present
Updates
Weekly
Publisher's selection policy
Copac contains the merged catalogues of members of the Consortium of Research Libraries - CURL: http://www.curl.ac.uk/ In addition catalogues and special collection records are being added from non-CURL libraries, to enhance access to major research collections. Details of forthcoming libraries are available at: http://copac.ac.uk/libraries/forthcoming/
Full text linking
Increasing numbers of Copac records include URL links to document full-text, summaries etc. Some links are supplied in the library's records, others are added centrally.
Copac is OpenURL compliant accepting requests conforming to both Pre-standard OpenURL 0.1 and Standard version 1.0: http://copac.ac.uk/interfaces/openurl/ Copac includes an OpenURL link in the Full Record display. Where a library has registered their OpenURL resolver with the OpenURL Router their users will see their own local OpenURL link in the records.
Federated searching
Copac is Z39.50 compliant: http://copac.ac.uk/interfaces/z39.50/
Copac also has an SRW with SOAP server and an SRU server. This is accessible at: http://copac.ac.uk:3000/copac
MARC records
Copac is able to deliver MARC records, but this is restricted to authorised services and the records are not for cataloguing purposes.
Metadata standards
AACR2, MARC21, XML format Dublin Core, MODS, BibTeX, BibTeXML, GRS-1.
Search options
The Web interface has three search screens:
Quick search (search all records):
Author (etc), Title, Keyword.
Main search (search all records): Author (etc), Title, Publisher, ISBN/ISSN (etc), Subject, Keyword. Limit by: Date published, Place published, Material type, Language, Library.
Map Search: (search for maps, atlases, plans etc): Place, Scale - Fuzzy, Scale - Exact, ISBN/ISSN, Keyword. Limit by: Date published, Place published, Library.
Copac search plugins are available for Firefox 2.0 and Internet Explorer 7 allowing the user to search Copac from their browser search bar. A Copac search plugin is also available for Facebook users.
Post-search options
Live circulation data is available for most libraries allowing the searcher to check the local location of an item and whether it is currently on-loan. For the remaining libraries basic location details
are provided centrally.
Records can be Marked to create a Marked list. This is retained for at least 7 days from last use, allowing the searcher to bookmark it and continue working within the same search session at a later date.
Similarly the Search History is retained for 7 days from last use, so this can be bookmarked allowing the user to return to their search session.
Records can be downloaded by email or saved to the users' computer. A variety of download formats are available, including a tagged format suitable for importing records into reference management software. Copac is compatible with the Zotero citation management plugin for Firefox 2.
The Copac Filter file for Reference Manager and the Copac Connection File for EndNote can be downloaded from the FAQ page: http://copac.ac.uk/faq/#import
Usage statistics
Usage statistics are available at: http://copac.ac.uk/about/stats/#institution
The statistics give details of the number of sessions and searches originating from a specific academic address each month, broken down into access through each of the two main Copac interfaces: Web and Z39.50. Statistics can be viewed online as a table and graph, and can be
downloaded as a csv file.
Authentication
Not applicable
Personalisation of the online resource
A search can be established as an RSS feed, providing automatic updates as new or amended records are found relating to the chosen search.
Accessibility
Copac has been designed to be both usable and accessible. Efforts are made to ensure at least AA compliance with the W3C accessibility guidelines.