Cobra+ was a concerted action involving national libraries and other bibliographic agencies across europe. It was been funded by the European Commission from June 1996 until the beginning of January 1999, and it carried on the work initiated by the earlier cobra programme in the early 1990s. The programme involved a series of research projects and pilot studies aimed at fostering co-operation between national initiatives in the provision of bibliographic services. Amongst the areas covered were improved methods of bibliographic control, resource access and sharing, the agreeing of standards, user needs and access, the use of networks, legal deposit, collection development, electronic publishing, and multilingual indexing, which gave rise to the following projects and studies:
- Flex: (file labelling): the development of standards for the labelling of bibliographic files when distributed across networks.
- Chase: (character set standardisation): feasibility tests for migration strategies to unicode.
- Author: feasibility study into the networking of national name authority files.
- Unimarc: an investigation and testing of the feasibility of using unimarc as the format for a multi-national database.
- Metric: feasibility of the exploitation of bibliometric data in national bibliographic databases to provide new services for users.
- Biblink: the establishment of a relationship between national bibliographic agencies and publishers of electronic material in order to create authoritative information that will benefit both sectors.
- Nedlib: aims to construct the basic infrastructure upon which a networked European deposit library can be built. The objectives of nedlib concur with the mission of national deposit libraries to ensure that electronic publications of the present can be used now and in the future.
- Macs: multilingual access to subjects. A feasibility study into linking three subject heading languages, which has given rise to a proposal for a prototype.
In addition two studies were commissioned:
- Legal deposit study looking at the storage, access and service implications of deposit collections of electronic publications.
- Study of models for national bibliographic data and service provision in Europe.
Full details of these projects and studies, along with contact details for further information, and copies of the reports that resulted from these and other cobra+ information can be found on the cobra+ world wide web page. See :
http://www.bl.uk/information/cobra.htmlThe success of cobra+ may be measured by the fact that although thefunding period has expired, members of the cobra+ forum have agreed to continue the group, and have already started to initiate new projects.
The Swiss national library was especially active in the area of multilingual access: members of staff managed the macs feasibility study and produced the final reports. In addition the Swiss national library chaired the cobra+ task group 'a' which examined issues and recommended actions in the area of metadata and bibliographic control and access with particular reference To electronic publications.
