The union catalog of the URBS consortium currently consists of ca. 500,000 bibliographic records: in addition to monographs and periodicals, it includes records for photographs, prints, electronic resources, maps and musical scores.
Over the years the catalog has been increased through the projects for retrospective cataloging undertaking by the various member institutions, and by daily accessions through current shared cataloging.
The catalog has adopted the format USMARC (now MARC21), is based on internationals standard ISBD (International Standard Bibliographic Description), and has Italian and English headings and subjects. The English follows the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules (AACR2), the Library of Congress Subject Headings and rules for subject description, while the Italian follows the cataloging norms of the Vatican Library (Norme vaticane per il Catalogo degli stampati) and the subject headings of the Vatican Library (SBAV).
The centralised management of the database, responsability of the Database Editor (DBE), guarantees the coherence of the authority file and of the thesaurus, by means of the validation of the authority records and the creation and maintenance of links between Italian and English forms of headings.
In May 2006, members of URBS purchased a new software package, Millennium of Innovative Interfaces.
Millennium will allow more flexible management for the individual members of URBS, as well as offering new services for readers and will facilitate the use of electronic resources, both within and outside the network.
It will also be possible to create a “virtual catalogue” together with other research libraries in Rome, which use different software, thereby offering scholars a broader bibliographic base to support academic research.