The British School at Rome - Library and Archive

URBS - Unione Romana Biblioteche Scientifiche

The Network

The URBS network, which provides one of the largest and most important databases for research in the humanities, is composed of the libraries of 11 Italian and foreign academies and research institutes in Rome. An important bibliographic resource for the various humanistic disciplines (including archaeology, history, history of art and architecture, philology, patristic studies, law, pedagogy, and sociology), the URBS database has been available as an online union catalogue since 1995, through www.reteurbs.org.

History

The URBS network, which has celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2002, was incorporated officially in February 1992, through the efforts of libraries from five different countries (American Academy in Rome, British School at Rome, Danske Institut for Videnskab og Kunst i Rom, Norske Institutt i Roma for Kunsthistorie og Klassisk Arkeologi and Svenska Institutet i Rom), which formed a consortium with the Vatican Library, under the aegis of the International Union of Institutes of Archaeology, History and History of Art.

In reality, the bases for collaboration and for a union catalogue had already been laid down in the 1980s, when the librarians of the American Academy and the British School exchanged catalogue cards and began meeting together. They were soon joined by the librarians of the Swedish Institute, Norwegian Institute and Danish Academy, thus creating an informal, non-technical network. Around the same time (1986, to be precise), the Libera Università Maria Santissima Assunta (which would not officially join the network until 1996) had joined the Vatican Library in acquiring a common online cataloguing system. In March 1990 the British School organized a meeting and invited representatives of the American Academy, the Swedish Institute, the Danish Academy, the Austrian Institute, the Norwegian Institute, the Belgian Academy, and the Dutch Institute to examine the possibility of a formal collaboration.

Informal contacts followed between five of these institutes and Father Leonard E. Boyle, then Prefect of the Vatican Library, who on April 3, 1990, invited them to view the Geac8000 system of the Vatican Library. The five institutes accepted his offer to use the server at the Vatican Library and to take advantage of the automation knowhow of its Centro Elaborazione Dati (CED) to build a common network and to begin automating their own catalogues.

Little by little the group grew larger, first by admitting other institutes as observers and as participants in study groups and then by welcoming them as proper members - this was the case for the French School and for the Dutch Institute.

Today the URBS network is composed of 12 institutional members, chiefly academies and research institutes of the following nations: Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the United States. The mission of the network, whose bibliographic holdings are chiefly in the humanistic disciplines, is to provide its users with a union catalogue of specialised libraries in Rome.

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The catalogue

The union catalogue of the URBS network currently consists of ca. 950,000 bibliographic records for various types of materials; in addition to monographs and periodicals, there are also records in the database for photographs, prints, coins, electronic resources, maps, musical scores, etc.

The creation of a catalogue of such dimensions and contents has been (and remains) possible not only through current shared cataloguing, which guarantees the addition of ca. 100-150 new records per day, but also through the various projects over the years for retrospective cataloguing by the various member institutions, beginning with that of the American Academy in Rome, begun in 1993.

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Membership

URBS welcomes new members from the ranks of Italian and foreign academic and research institutions active in the humanities, with statutory goals in consonance with those of the network. Requests for admission should be addressed in writing to the President and will be reviewed by the Assembly of members.

Updated text extracted from the Mini CD-Rom: "URBS: dieci anni di attività 1992-2002 " planned and realized by Giovanna Contigiani and Raffaella Vincenti in collaboration with Andrea Pirisi; English translation by Christina Huemer in the occasion of the 10th anniversary of URBS.

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