Summary
We describe a progress report on the potential use of absorption line spectroscopic indices in the mid-UV to determine the global chemical composition in unresolved stellar populations. The working sample consists of the whole collection of elliptical galaxies observed by the International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) in low resolution mode. We present here the results from the indices BL 2538, Fe ii 2609, Mg ii 2800, Mg i 2852, Fe i 3000, and Mg Wide. On the basis of the Index vs [Fe/H] correlations seen in a sample of galactic globular clusters, we derived the chemical composition for all our sample galaxies. All resulting abundances are subsolar with Mg features delivering, on average, the lowest values.