Special digital collections and bibliographic resources in the public libraries of Catalonia

Objectives: the Department of Culture's Library Service, in collaboration with the Management Services of the Libraries of the Provincial Council of Barcelona, has proposed undertaking an inventory, description and dissemination of the bibliographic resources on the Internet that have been made available by the public libraries and which are of a general interest to all library services in the Public Library System of Catalonia. Methodology: a team of experts from both the Library and Management Services undertook a search in which they identified and evaluated all resources available in the joint librarian services (libraries and support services). Results: details are provided of the procedure adopted in completing the inventory and the resources produced by the public libraries (16) and those created by national and regional library support services (7), as of the end of 2012, are described. The article concludes by offering a number of observations regarding the interest of sharing resources, and about how these resources can help endow libraries with a unique character.