Library News

After 40 years of development, as of 31 October 2021, the University of Macau Library has a physical collections of 849,614 cataloged items, with an average of about 3,500 items addition per month. By upgrading to the world’s most advanced new-generation library automation system - ALMA in July 2020, the UM Library’s cataloging team has greatly improved its work efficiency. Since its launch, 57,383 new bibliographies and 60,239 items have been added to it, and the bibliographic content has been updated 1,217,041 times. In addition, the library has also established a one-stop bibliographic service for readers with different needs, by creating 17 special collection databases, some of which can be accessed for full text (see Figure 1). In recent years, the library has actively promoted regional resource sharing and provided important bibliographic information, including uploading 215,070 bibliographic materials to OCLC, the world's largest joint bibliographic network, of which at least 1,296 were originally compiled. At present, this joint bibliography network has more than 16,500 member libraries in 124 countries. With the purpose of sharing knowledge and promoting scientific research, it provides global interlibrary loan services and allows readers to find library resources through Google Book, bringing the University of Macau closer to the forefront of academics (see Figure 2); The UM Library provided 576,088 records to the MALA Hub of the Macau Academic Library Alliance, accounting for 60% of the alliance's bibliographical information. Since the launch of the new system, the library has provided 260 and 65 lending services to local libraries and foreign libraries respectively. With the Alliance for Portuguese Language Resources between the Macao Special Administrative Region and the Mainland China launched in September of this year, the UM Library provided more than 20,000 records of Portuguese collections, strengthened Macao's function as a Sino-Portuguese platform, and provided global interlibrary loan services for Chinese and Portuguese resources and Macau documents. Readers are welcome to visit the following webpage: https://library.um.edu.mo/lib_homepage_en  (see Figure 3).

Figure 1. 17 special collection databases

Figure 2. Readers can find UM resources through Google Book

Figure 3. Online catalogue of the University of Macau Library