Effectiveness of National Union Catalogue in Sharing the Information in Sri Lanka

National Union Catalogue is an important bibliographic tool which can be used by any citizen of a country, irrespective of social or ethic differences in accessing about published and recorded knowledge available through the library system of a country. National Union Catalogue (NUCAT) plays a wide role in bibliographic control and library cooperation in every country. NUCAT differs significantly from the other library catalogues in a country with regard to objectives and the services .It is a centralized catalogue which specially provides the physical location of library materials in library collections with the other bibliographic information. Compilation of a National Union Catalogue is only been done by the National Library of a country as a part of its main services. Due to scarcity of fund, constantly changing information techniques and other infrastructure facilities libraries are not able to keep pace with the fast developing information requirements by its users. In view of these constrains some kind of cooperation between libraries is needed and any library can use National Union Catalogue as a bibliographic tool of library cooperation. The purpose of this study is to identify the effectiveness of the National Union Catalogue as a bibliographic tool to obtain information about library holdings available in Sri Lanka. Data for the study were gathered through structured questionnaires from randomly selected samples of 68 and 50 member libraries and the users of National Union Catalogue project respectively. Findings revealed that the 40% of special libraries contributed to the National Union Catalogue and the contribution of the University libraries in this regard was 24%.Researchers and other professionals from various fields were the main users of the National Union Catalogue and their usage of NUCAT showed 24% and 40% respectively. 32% frequently used this facility while 58% never used this service for fulfilling their information needs. Survey results indicated that 8% only fully satisfied with the current service provided by the National Union Catalogue. This study concludes that the National Union Catalogue could play a significant role in Sri Lanka with regard to the bibliographic control and library cooperation. Systematic contribution and live participation of all the stakeholders of the NUCAT project is being highly essential to facilitate an up to date bibliographic information service to the users in Sri Lanka. Also the relevant authorities must take necessary steps to increase the usage and popularity of the National Union Catalogue