Sabinet

The South African Bibliographic and Information Network, or Sabinet, is a comprehensive bibliographic service intended to facilitate resource sharing among South African libraries.

Established in 1983, Sabinet aimed to provide South Africa with a joint library network and a national union catalogue.

According to its corporate brochure[1], the principles behind the organisation are:

1. the system should be as simple as possible within the framework of a networked central library system, 2. participation in the network should be cost effective for libraries, 3. the purpose of the system should be to serve the user and not only the librarian, 4. the autonomy of local library systems and computer centres should always be taken into account, 5. the system should lend itself to the creation of a central database with high integrity, and 6. the central database should provide good coverage of materials in participating libraries.

In 1997 a new private company, Sabinet Online (Pty) Limited, was formed with the objective of addressing the changing needs of the online information community and to keep pace with the rapidly changing technology.

Sources

corporate brochure[2],