Ukrainian Catholic University library catalogue now available online (09/29/02)

Ukrainian Catholic University library catalogue now available online

by Matthew Matuszak

LVIV - In the spring of 2002, the electronic catalogue of the library of the Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU) went online. International users of the Internet now have access to it, in both English and Ukrainian at http://opac.ucu.edu.ua, or the homepage of the library's website, http://library.ucu.edu.ua. As a leader in information technology, the university has also registered new "Ucu.edu.ua" domain names for all of its existing websites.

The UCU has the fastest-growing university library in Ukraine and the largest electronic catalogue. Thanks to a generous donation from the Eugene and Daymel Shklar Foundation, Internet users in the United States and everywhere now have access to the library's catalogue of more than 55,000 items. The library's web interface was developed by the Ukrainian office of California-based Lohika Systems Inc.

The initial screen of the catalogue is divided into two parts. The university's classification scheme, encompassing the humanities and theological categories, is on the left side. On the right are the standard bibliographic access points: author, name, language, place of publication, publisher, year published and series.

The interface is in Ukrainian and in English, with a help feature. Even without Cyrillic fonts users can work with the transliteration feature, that is, Roman letters using the Library of Congress transliteration scheme.

A search turns up a list of matches. Every item in the list is a brief bibliographic description. Users can also have the full description, ready to print, for each item. The list is in the form of a buffer, a set of bibliographic records in the standard Ukrainian format

Library Director Ivan Herasym praised the achievement of Lohika Systems: "We really appreciate their style, their knowledge and expertise, and their readiness to help. Itís a pleasure to work with competent people who take an interest in our concerns. It's not easy to find that kind of service in Ukraine. We wanted to bring a particular kind of information to the Internet. Lohika was able to understand the very specific needs of bibliographic control and how to bring it to the web."

In addition to the library's main site and its electronic catalogue, all the websites of the university now have "Ucu.edu.ua" domain names. Before the institution's June inauguration as the Ukrainian Catholic University, it was known as the Lviv Theological Academy and thus had "LTA" domain names.

The university's main website, www.ucu.edu.ua, provides information on various aspects of the school, including academic programs, research institutes, campus life, and current news and events. In addition to texts in English and Ukrainian, this site has an abbreviated French version.

"From its very birth, the UCU has united people who seek truth, value, beauty and cherish love," said Cardinal Lubomyr Husar, primate of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, in his address for the university's inauguration.

The UCU brings beauty to the Internet with two distinctive websites. Ukrainian art, in particular iconography, is on display at the site of the Leopolis Project (http://leopolis.ucu.edu.ua). The texts are in English, though Ukrainian titles are also given for the artworks. And the cosmopolitan architecture of western Ukraine, influenced by Polish, Austrian, Soviet and other styles, is the subject of its own site. Galiciana (http://galiciana.ucu.edu.ua) gives a Ukrainian-language tour of the area's monuments.

Both of these projects are directed by Dr. Ihor Zhuk, who in July had an exhibit at The Ukrainian Museum in New York. Dr. Zhuk will be a Fulbright scholar at Harvard University this fall.

| Home Page |