The 24th General Assembly of „Fides” was held on Sept. 4-6, 2018 in the Theological Library of the Silesian University in Katowice. The jubilee 25th General Assembly of „Fides” will be held on Sept. 3-5, 2019 in the Diocesan Library in Sandomierz. The number of members of „Fides” amounts 80 libraries.

The main project undertaken by „Fides” since June 2014 is the union catalogue of „Fides” libraries which uses Koha system. There is one installation of the system on „Fides”’ server, which is accessible via the Internet. The aim is to have one bibliographical record for all items from different libraries. The catalogue is fully controlled by authority files. As a rule, shared cataloguing of new documents in Polish NUKAT union database is adopted. Our project is based on the strong cooperation with NUKAT – the union catalogue of Polish research and academic libraries (http://katalog.nukat.edu.pl/). Thus, member libraries participating in the project are also members of NUKAT community. It helps to provide information about our holdings to the academic community and to promote religious and theological books. At the same time, the cooperation with NUKAT allows church librarians to improve their cataloguing skills.

By now we have 19 libraries participating in the project. Next libraries are expected to join in the nearest future. The number of records in „Fides” union catalogue amounts now more than 600,000. The catalogue covers more than 1,640,000 items (volumes). The impact of these libraries on NUKAT database is about 21,500 bibliographic records and about 10,000 authority records during last five years. The catalogue can be accessed at https://katalog.fides.org.pl/. These nineteen libraries are mainly small (one-person) or middle size libraries, as more reach libraries of catholic universities and other institutions can use commercial inte-grated library systems. There are such other nine „Fides” libraries cooperating with NUKAT catalogue separately.

“Fides” continues also its previous activities and projects. Three other central services are present in the Internet: an online theological bibliographical database, a digital library and a multi browser FIDKAR (with about 60 searchable catalogues and bibliographical databases). The theological bibliographical database (EBNT = “Elektroniczna Bibliografia Nauk Teologicznych” [Electronic Bibliography of Theology and Religion]) indexes articles and essays published mostly since 1980 in about 200 Polish periodicals on theology, philosophy and religious studies and in more than 500 Festschriften and congress publications. In this project „Fides” cooperates with the National Library of Poland. This database is accessible from the „Fides” website. Now, the total number of records is more than 102,000. It can be accessed at http://biblio.fides.org.pl/. The digital library of „Fides” (http://digital.fides.org.pl/) comprises 1700 publications. These digital resources are available also via European Digital Library “Europeana”.

Federation is publishing the semi-annual periodical “Fides. Biuletyn Bibliotek Kościelnych” (ISSN 1426-3777). The bulletin is fully digitised from the first issue in 1995 and fully indexed, and available from the Federation’s web services. From June 2011 „Fides” has its fan page on Facebook and the number of fans amounts 640+.

Fr. Jerzy Witczak