Abstract:The online bibliographic retrieval service (OBRS) is a main service which should be provided by libraries on network environment. Every OBRS provided via Telnet or Web has its own access procedures and a special user interface and query language. The Z39.50 protocol offers a solution to heterogeneity problem. In this paper, a system that provides OBRS based on Z39.50 is described. The system supports Chinese retrieval and multi-MARC (machine-readable cataloguing) including CNMARC, and is highly configurable and scaleable. Main technical design and simple comparison with related systems are given in this paper.