Unicode Based Multilingual Catalogue Module: A New Feature of SOUL

Abstract

The INFLIBNET Centre has SOUL software developed for the automation and management of the Indian academic libraries, which has presence across the country in around 1500 libraries. INFLIBNET Centre being a nodal agency for Indian universities and keeping in view the requirement of the modernization of the their libraries with ICT facilities, Centre has developed this software and made available to the libraries in the nominal cost. With the development of the technology and the requirement changes of the library with the technology, it was due for the INFLIBNET Centre to make some necessary changes with the SOUL software. This paper introduces the new catalogue module of the SOUL software with the very new features such as MARC21, Unicode and MARCXML etc abreast with the new applications of the ICT. The Centre happily announces the new name of the SOUL software from the “Software for University Libraries” to the “Software for Library Automation and Management”.