tap into other local and overseas library systems when searching for information.

College vice president for development Dr. Frederick Ming told Hamilton Rotarians last week that the Library Information Network Consortium Bermuda (LINC) would move Bermuda forward in education.

"LINC is a not-for-profit consortium of libraries and educational institutions,'' he said. "It points to a library-to-library specialised system using the facility of communication provided by the Internet and software now in use overseas.'' The system will allow a person who signs on at one of the member libraries to see not only that library's listing of books and periodicals but the complete collection of all libraries on the system.

"Internet permits this facility to be extended overseas,'' Dr. Ming added.

The programme's objectives are to provide easy access for all students and educators in Bermuda to local and global libraries and other information sources via the Internet and other electronic services.

"At the heart of the LINC network is a state-of-the-art Library Management System (LMS), which is capable of integrating the various library collections into a single system from the user's perspective.'' Dr. Ming also said that through the means of this highly specialised suite of library software programmes and the Internet, Bermuda's educational library collections -- whether resident in the college, public libraries, public or independent schools -- "will be pooled to the benefit of all users''.

"Interlibrary loans would then become a feasible and readily attainable, manageable option for Bermuda libraries of all types,'' he said.

He added that the development of this "historic communications network would connect libraries of all public and independent schools and the Bermuda Library with each other and with the Bermuda College library''.

"Through this means, students and teachers at the school will be able to access the library collection and the CD-ROM databases at the college, search other on-line databases, such as the Library of Congress, and in time access the wide-range of other educational opportunities accessible via Internet.'' Dr. Ming also said that in the future, LINC Bermuda could expand locally to perhaps include participation by such organisations as the Bermuda Biological Station for Research, the Maritime Museum, the Bermuda Aquarium and Zoo, the library of the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital, the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute, and others.