Summary
The main subject of this paper belongs to the field of bibliographic records retrieval. One of the services necessary for the functioning of a modern library information system is called the shared cataloguing. It consists of the following: when processing a new bibliographic unit a librarian first has to check whether it has already been explained in another library in the world. If so, the librarian stores its electronic record to the local bibliographic records database of her/his library, and enters the specific location data. The basic idea is to make bibliographic records created by one library available to all the other libraries to download. In this way, librarians spend less time in the process of cataloguing books, and in addition they can also check the quality of their own bibliographic records consulting databases of various international institutions dealing with cataloguing, such as e.g. the Library of Congress in Washington. The process of exchanging records between libraries requires existence of the interoperable systems. In order to achieve interoperability and facilitate the search of various databases available over the Internet and download of bibliographic records, it was necessary to create appropriate standards and communication protocols, independent of the specific library information system used in a particular library. One of those protocols is described in this paper.

Keywords:
interoperability, library information systems, bibliographic records retrieval, protocols.

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