PDA Consortium Style

Abstract

T he University of Colorado (CU) system represents a diverse group of institutions composed of three universities operating on four distinct campuses with five separately administered libraries. The libraries are located at the University of Colorado Boulder (CUB), University of Colorado Colorado Springs (UCCS), University of Colorado Denver (UCD), University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus (a component of UCD), and the University of Colorado School of Law (a component of CUB located on the CUB campus). CUB is the CU system's flagship institution. The diversity of the campuses and programs served by the CU libraries is reflected in their respective budgets and in the operational structures they developed to meet the needs of their patrons with the resources available to them. Currently each library uses Innovative Interfaces's integrated library system (ILS), and all five participate in Prospector, a unified catalog of over forty academic, public and special libraries in Colorado and Wyoming, sponsored by the Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries. However, while CUB uses Ingram Academic, formerly Coutts Information Services, as its major vendor for monographic purchases, a variety of other vendors supply print and electronic monographs to the CU system libraries, including unique vendor arrangements for each library. Furthermore, the cataloging or metadata units of the CU system Wen-ying Lu