Birmingham, June 13th, 2005 - OCLC PICA is pleased to announce it has won
the tender to provide electronic content to the NHS Scotland e-Library.
NHS Scotland is now licensed to use 5,000 health related titles from
OCLC’s NetLibrary eBook service, making this collection one of the largest
medical eBook collections in Europe.

NHS Scotland Knowledge Services aim to deliver health information at point
of need to the extended healthcare family in Scotland. After an earlier
evaluation of the service through a pilot programme, NHS Scotland chose
NetLibrary to start building a broader range of health and medical eBooks
to meet the needs of the NHS Scotland user community.

“During the pilot we became quite pleased with the user model that
NetLibrary offers us”, said Dr Ann Wales, NHS Scotland Knowledge Services
Coordinator. “This, plus the comprehensive range of high quality titles
available and the user friendly administrative system made it clear to us
that a favourable decision for OCLC’s NetLibrary would enable us to
quickly set up an extensive collection of eBooks to include in our
national e-Library.”

OCLC’s NetLibrary platform provides academic, public, special and school
libraries with eContent solutions that support Web-based research,
reference and learning. Proven in more than 14,000 libraries worldwide,
NetLibrary pioneered the eBook category and continues to offer the only
comprehensive approach to building and managing eContent collections.

Core users will be staff and students working and training with NHS
Scotland. Based on the patient journey model which forms the framework for
the NHS Scotland Knowledge Strategy, other eligible users will include:
the Scottish Executive; Local Authority staff involved in delivery of
health services; health care staff in the prison service, nursing homes,
armed forces, hospices; members of Scottish Royal Colleges; the Voluntary
Health Sector; and several more.

The agreement between OCLC and the NHS National Services Scotland in
Edinburgh covers eBooks in the subject areas like: Medicine; Biomedical
Sciences; Life Sciences; Nursing, Midwifery and Health Visiting, Allied
Health, Psychiatry, Psychology, Health Psychology, Integrative Care;
Health Economics; Medical Sociology; Epidemiology; Education and Training;
Research Methodology; Estates and Facilities Management, Health Records,
Public Health, Health Promotion, Health Policy, Administrative and
Clerical Work, Health Informatics and Librarianship, Social Care and
Consumer Health.

With the 5,000 medical titles another 3,800 titles are available from the
public domain. This agreement is one of considerable size. It also shows
NHS Scotland’s commitment to the NetLibrary service, with an initial 3-
year contract period and an option to renew for an additional two years.

OCLC PICA is the European library cooperative and offers an extensive
range of leading edge and high-tech products and services for both library
professionals and library end users. Thousands of patrons daily use the
OCLC PICA systems for automatic cataloguing, retrieval, interlibrary loan
and conservation. Thanks to those Library Management Systems, Professional
Solutions and Library User Services, for example over 76 million books and
websites can be found efficiently. With its headquarters in Leiden, the
Netherlands, and regional offices in Birmingham and Paris, OCLC PICA is
active in the European, Southern African and Middle Eastern markets on
behalf of its shareholders OCLC Inc and Stichting Pica. OCLC Online
Computer Library Center Inc is a non-profit organization and offers its
services to 52,000 libraries in 95 countries and territories. More
information about OCLC PICA can be found at www.oclcpica.org.

For further information please contact Ralf. Münzenmayer, Manager
Communications, OCLC PICA B.V.  E-mail: [log in to unmask],
Tel: +31 71 524 65 00