Union Lists : Karlsruhe Virtual Catalog

Karlsruhe Virtual Catalog [KVK]: Description

Using "screen scraping" technology, the system simultaneously searches & retrieves results from multiple catalogs.
KVK is a federated search system, not a database.
Most catalogs are from Germany, Austria & Switzerland, but nearly 20 national library catalogs and a half dozen antiquarian catalogs are also available for searching.

For most, KVK has very limited uses.
Generally KVK should only be used for "known item" searches (e.g. verifing the existence of a book not found in WorldCat), or for searching for all works by a particular author. It is ineffective for browsing for information on a subject.
Because KVK is a search system, not a database:
- it relies on the availability of the catalogs it searches: if they are unavailable, it does not return results for those catalogs.
- It cannot offer any more functionality than the individual catalogs: the search system is only as good as the lowest common denominator.
- There is no "authority control" for titles, authors, or serials.
- Because of different national transliteration practices, words transliterated from other scripts (Cyrillic, Arabic, Japanese, etc.) may be spelled many different ways.