Being conscious of the need to raise the academic level as well as of supplying the commu-nity with the basic elements for its achievement, in 1983 the University of Colima, Mexico started a Library Development Program to establish the following two activities:

• Central information systematization process and

• Decentralized library services.

At the beginning, all the activities were based on manual procedures, thus they advanced slowly. Then, it became clear that there was a need to look for operation alternatives. In March 1984, the planning stage for the library system automation began.

In a first stage the system development, catalog card printing was the primary objective. Then, the project became increasingly more ambitious. It gradually covered, step by step, each specific job that was included on the Library System flowcharts.

Finally, the software development was completed. It included the following five modules:

• Acquisitions

• Bibliographic Analysis

• Searching

• Book Lending and

• Statistics.

This software, originally designed for a minicomputer, was made available for PC environ-ment due to the emerging advantages of microcomputers.

2. USERS

In the winter of 1985, the first version of the Integrated Automated Library System of the University of Colima (SIABUC), was nationally released. It represented the beginning of a series of inter-institutional cooperation activities that have been increasing ever since. Many institutions have expressed a deep interest in obtaining SIABUC. The procedure for getting a copy of this software has been established through an Academic Agreement that grants the signer institution at no cost. Now, there are 90 institutions (public universities, government organizations, research centers and private enterprises) using SIABUC all over the country.

In addition, training courses have been offered to the users. During 1986 and 1987, nine courses were imparted at the University of Colima, and since 1988, the training is offered at the requesting institution. So far, a total of 202 persons from 32 organizations have participated in these training courses.

3. UP DATING MECHANISMS

In order to improve the quality of SIABUC, The SIABUC's Users Reunions has been organized. An Counselling Committee was also established. An early periodical experience exchange session among institutional representatives who operated SIABUC was held in order to share their comments, thus contributed to a more comprehensive and updated SIABUC version.

The Counselling Committee consists of four specialists, two are leading librarians and the other two are informatic authorities. The team reviews the users' proposals and decides on those that will be considered for inclusion in the SIABUC further version.

4. STRUCTURE

To date, Versions 1.1 and 2.0. have also been developed in addition to the original one. Version 2.0, using Boolean operators, is a powerful retrieval tool with greater retrieval speed. It is also compatible to MicroIsis system, and their modules presents more versatility.

From its origins, SIABUC was designed as a library management system. Its objective has been to be an efficient tool for technical processes, library services, as well as a decision making instrument for librarians. It started as a modular system from the beginning, and this structure is maintained to this date.

SIABUC 2.0 Modules

The integrated system has the following modules and functions:

• Acquisitions

- Searching bibliography that is in the process of acquisition

- Capture of acquisition applications

- Printing reports of the acquisition applications

- Up-dating directories of editors, publishers and libraries

- Budget management

- Text processor

• Analysis

- Capture, edition and correction of card catalogue records

- Printing sets of card catalogues, lending cards and classification tags

- Import/export card catalogue records using the ISO 2709 format

• Searching

- Word and sequential data retrieval in any field of the card catalogue record

- Use of boolean operators

- Combination of words and truncation of searching terms

• Book lending

- Capture and modification of: lending, users and unclassified books

- Printing reports of books taken out, due and their reminders

• Statistics - Statistical data about:

- Budget

- Titles acquired

- Productivity indexes

- Existing titles per library

- Titles most consulted

- Registered users

- Lending

• Special processes - Indexation and up-dating of the bibliographic analysis records.

5. SIABUC IN THE COLIMA PROJECT

In July 1989, the Ministry of Education of Mexico through its Higher Education and Scien-tific Research Subsecretariat, initiated an ambitious national program for the data systema-tization in universities, known as "The Colima Project". This program intends to encourage the library systems modernization through bibliographic automated processes, based on Mexican software. This Project has been supporting SIABUC as well as the development of its new versions in order to provide enhanced features, both as a data handler and as a retrieval tool and at the same time to keep a pace with the technological development. Yet, this development does not necessarily mean that library automation on Mexican universities will be based on SIABUC only.

As a consequence of SIABUC developing process and its implementation in a great number of Mexican higher education and research institutions, they have begun to share their catalogue information which is available on CD-ROM. Two compact disks containing Mexican bibliographic databases have been produced by the University of Colima. Continuing efforts are made to identify bibliographical resources existing in the universities of Mexico through the following actions:

• Encouraging systematization by a national software, MARC compatible, that is capable for up-loading and down-loading records, and

• Sharing bibliographic resources through CD-ROM technology.

6. FINAL COMMENT

The experience of the University of Colima in the development of both software and compact disc editions, has permitted interesting cooperation activities among institutions by sharing experiences, information, technology and bibliographic resources. These has generated a rich feedback to improve library services using new technologies. SIABUC has helped to increase Mexican universities academic and research programs, and have provided their users more efficient access to a greater information universe.