The year of the UNICORN: a review of the first year's experience with the UNICORN collection management system at the King's Fund Centre

Abstract

In the Autumn of 1989, King Edward's Hospital Fund for London embarked on an ambitious project to develop a fully integrated information retrieval system for its two libraries and several specialist information exchanges accessible to all staff via the Fund's office automation network. In August 1990, it became the first European organisation to purchase the UNICORN collection management system to which it added the BRS/ SEARCH system for a complete full‐text retrieval and library management package. One year after installation, all modules are operational, a major collection inventory, weeding and barcoding project is nearly complete and the retrospective conversion of the library catalogues is on target with completion due in less than six months. The Fund, now one several of European UNICORN sites, recently hosted the first European UNICORN Users' Group.

Library management systems

“…Haines 42 describes her experiences during 1990 in attempting to negotiate the acquisition of an American system, Unicorn, from the Sirsi Corporation, which was previously not available in Europe, for use in a British independent health fund, the King"s Fund. Sirsi was determined not to enter the European market without a partner with expertise in library software support and with the necessary technical skills in Unix systems.…”

Biomedical journal collaboration in London: development of the union database

“…It was also noted that the Unicorn library management system from the Sirsi Corporation was the system being used by the majority of the partner libraries for their online catalogues. Unicorn had been chosen by the King's Fund Library (one of the project partners) in 1991 (Haines, 1992) and, subsequently several other similar libraries had chosen that system.…”