ISSN ISSN 1443-0568 | no. 66 | December 2003
Why are NUC Symbols important?
NUC (National Union Catalogue) symbols are unique identifiers used by networks to represent a library’s name in a short easily remembered way. The NUC symbol is generated from the location and the name of library. The first character of the symbol represents the state (e.g. ‘N’ for New South Wales with the exception of the Northern Territory which is represented by ‘X’ and ‘Y’ for Overseas) followed generally by the initials of the organisation or library. NUC symbols are issued by the National Library of Australia and are registered in the Australian Interlibrary Resource Sharing Directory where the current name and all symbols associated with an organisation are listed. The directory is easily searched via type of library name, NUC symbol, and/or state. See <www.nla.gov.au/ilrs/> to search the directory.
So why are NUC symbols important? They are widely used by networks such as
Kinetica and Gratisnet to represent the participating libraries.
In these systems, NUCs are used to identify those libraries that hold material
listed on the database, for example the NBD (National Bibliographic Database),and
are used by the KDD (Kinetica Document Delivery) service to list locations in
the rota.
In the case of the National Library’s Document Supply Service, NUC symbols
are used in our databases to help facilitate the efficient delivery of loans
and copies to requesting libraries as well as to ensure correct billing takes
place. In short, it helps US to help YOU. So please include your NUC symbol
on all your requests.
—Chris Hickey
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Please address any comments and enquiries to The Editor, Gateways: mbrooks@nla.gov.au