INFORMATION SYSTEMS USED IN BULGARIAN UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES AS ONLINE PUBLIC ACCESS CATALOGS.

An important factor in the scientific and educational process in higher education is the local library of the respective educational institution. The local library offers the use of the local library information system and more precisely the Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC) to perform a lot of reference and research activities for the mentioned process. As the name suggests the system usually works online and has a web-based interface that allows working with it remotely over the Internet using a regular web browser. The present study aims to reveal the share of these systems in the Bulgarian university libraries by conducting empirical research. The survey covers all 51 Bulgarian higher education institutions accredited in 2019. The main scope of the study is the "Online public access catalogs" which is an essential part of each library information system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]