20 June 2007 - Issue 6 |
Polish academic libraries choose WorldCat and FirstSearch
Eight Polish academic libraries are subscribing to WorldCat and FirstSearch following a successful pilot. The libraries all contribute to NUKAT (Narodowy Uniwersalny Katalog Centralny), Poland’s national union catalogue which serves around 60 academic and research libraries and 900 librarians. NUKAT records were added to WorldCat last year for the first time. In 2006, a large proportion of the NUKAT union catalogue of records and holdings was added to WorldCat, building up the world’s largest and most comprehensive database of bibliographic and ownership information by a further 350,000 records. NUKAT contributed records on items published in Poland or in Polish, making the contribution an important one both for libraries within the country seeking interlibrary loans and for any institution wishing to develop their collections of Polish materials. The National Library of Poland/University of Warsaw continues to contribute the NUKAT records and will be adding around 100,000 records during 2007. The contribution of NUKAT’s records and holdings precipitated a pilot of WorldCat FirstSearch for all the NUKAT members. Over 50 per cent of NUKAT members participated and over a quarter of them subsequently made the decision to continue using FirstSearch beyond the pilot phase. FirstSearch is an ideal tool for mediated discovery. Users benefit from additional catalogue information including tables of contents, reviews and excerpts, which allows them to quickly evaluate resource relevance and to easily ascertain where they can gain access to the content.
Agnieszka Kasprzyk, Research Assistant for NUKAT Center of Warsaw University Library, said, “Polish libraries contributing to NUKAT are proudly taking their first steps on the way to cooperation within the WorldCat framework. Polish authors and Polish library collections have gained a world-wide audience and Polish users of WorldCat reach through their local library window out to the whole world.” Agnieszka and her colleagues will present a paper on NUKAT cooperation with OCLC and Google at a conference for Polish librarians in July.
New OCLC PICA delegates elected to OCLC Members CouncilThe number of delegates on the OCLC Members Council representing the region served by OCLC PICA has been increased to eight. Between February and April, OCLC PICA conducted an election, according to OCLC Members Council rules, and new delegates have been appointed. These changes took effect beginning with the May 2007 Members Council meeting. The Members Council provides advice and counsel to OCLC. OCLC Members Council delegates serve for a three year period. This year, Alex Klugkist (Groningen University, Netherlands) ends his term. "OCLC PICA and OCLC are very grateful to Alex Klugkist for his time and efforts contributed to this important OCLC body," said Rein van Charldorp, Managing Director, OCLC PICA. Berndt Dugall (Frankfurt University, Germany), elected delegate at large on the Executive Committee last year, is re-elected to a new 3-year term. Juha Hakala (Helsinki University, Finland) becomes a full delegate. Newly elected delegates to serve 2007-2010 are Klaus Ceynowa and Graham Jefcoate. Elected as new alternate delegate for the same period is Robin Green. "OCLC PICA would like to congratulate all new delegates," said Mr. van Charldorp. IFLA/OCLC Fellows visit EuropeFive young library and information science professionals have completed the IFLA/OCLC Early Career Development Fellows 2007 programme with a week of activities in Europe, as guests of OCLC PICA. This international fellowship programme prepares librarians to help libraries thrive in countries with developing economies. During the 2007 programme, which ran from April 27 through June 1, the fellows participated in a five-week programme of lectures, seminars and mentoring. The first four weeks they were based at OCLC's headquarters in Dublin, Ohio, USA, and the final week they were based at OCLC PICA's headquarters in Leiden, Netherlands. The most impressive experience during the European visit for Kodjo Atiso (librarian, Animal Research Institute, Achimota, Ghana) was the digitisation process: "Everywhere in Europe we feel the idea is 'going digital'," he says. "It is one of the important things I will tell my colleagues when I get back home." Alicia Esguerra (instructor/librarian, Bulacan State University , Malolos City , Philippines ) adds: "I'm impressed with the presence of all the special collections, how much has been kept and preserved over the centuries, all that history and culture." Also the fellows liked the way European libraries plan for the future, for example by building repositories, thinking about copyright and working on international collaboration.
From left to right: Kodjo Atiso (Ghana), Nevena Tomic (Serbia), Alicia Esguerra (Philippines), Pauline Nicholas (Jamaica) and Elisangela Alves Silva (Brasil). The IFLA/OCLC Early Career Development Fellowship Programme started in 2001 and supports library and information science professionals from countries with developing economies. The Fellowship programme provides advanced continuing education and exposure to a broad range of issues in information technologies, library operations and management, and global cooperative librarianship. To date, the programme has welcomed 33 librarians and information science professionals from 23 nations. New databases available on FirstSearchFrom September 2007, 12
new databases will be available from OCLC’s FirstSearch service.
They are the RLG Eureka databases and they can be ordered from now,
with introductory pricing available for first-time subscribers that
order by 25th June 2007.
SCIPIO: Art and Rare Book Sales Catalogs will also become available in FirstSearch following the initial release. SCIPIO records will also
be added to WorldCat and will represent a scoped view of WorldCat
similar to the WorldCat Dissertations and WorldCat eBooks databases.
OCLC PICA UK Customer Conference in JulyThe OCLC PICA UK Customer Conference held in association with the OLIB User Group has been announced, and this year promises to be even bigger and better with additional parallel tracks having been added. The event in Sheffield on 10/11 July will commence with a keynote address from Robin Murray, VP of Global Product Management outlining some visions for our future. Also included in the list of sessions is a presentation by the Head of Management Services, Norbert Weinberger on "Future Directions for Library Management Systems". We also have the usual mix of informative and practical sessions by customers - this year, Unilever and NHS Greater Glasgow - and by our own Application Services team. To register online, click here. |
Board Launches Governance ReviewThe OCLC Board of Trustees has appointed a special Governance Study Committee to conduct a review of OCLC's governance structure. The Board will also retain a consulting firm to assist the Committee in the study.
There are now 13 Members Council delegates elected from outside the United States, 8 of which are from the region served by OCLC PICA. In fiscal 2006, revenues from non-U.S. operations were 22 percent of total revenues of $208.4 million, compared with 9 percent of total revenues in 2000, when OCLC's governance was last reviewed. In the past three years, OCLC has processed approximately 22 million records from non-U.S. libraries for loading into WorldCat and is scheduled to process some 70 million additional records in the coming year. Most of these records are being added through agreements with national libraries. The review which is being conducted by The Higher Education Consultancy Group (HECG) based in the UK, is seeking input from all OCLC Members, not just those involved in Members Council. For more information on how you can contribute to the review, click here. VDX article wins awardA paper on VDX ISO-ILL interoperability between the National Library of New Zealand and The University of Auckland has recently been presented a Highly Commended Paper Award at the Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence 2007. Every year Emerald invites each of their journal's Editorial Team to nominate papers published in their titles for Outstanding Paper and Highly Commended Papers from the previous 12 months. The award is based on originality, relevance, timeliness, rigour, presentation and structure. The article, "ISO and I reap - lessons learned from Antipodean implementations of the ISO-ILL protocol" was written by David Reid and Jill Irwin. It was published in the journal Interlending & Document Supply, Vo. 34, No. 3. David Reid is an Application Specialist, Inter-Loans Systems at National Library of New Zealand and Jill Irwin is the Interlibrary Services Manager at The University of Auckland. They are both seasoned users of VDX in New Zealand. |
"As OCLC becomes an increasingly global cooperative, we need
to adjust our governance to ensure representation and participation
by our members around the world," said Lizabeth Wilson, Chair, OCLC
Board of Trustees, and Dean of University Libraries, University
of Washington. "This study will review and evaluate current and
alternative governance forms for OCLC. The Committee will
recommend a governance structure appropriate to the roles that OCLC
is expected to carry out in the next decade." 
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