Hi,
Please find press release below. If you would like any further information,
please let me know.
Warm regards,
Catherine
Polish academic libraries choose WorldCat and FirstSearch
Birmingham, 22 June 2007 – 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 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 First Search 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.
Dr Henryk Hollender, Director, Lublin University of Technology Library,
adds, “WorldCat is a novelty in Poland, and the solution adopted seems
pretty inventive and elegant. Next to all the imaginable general
applications (including showing our professors the books they authored in
the libraries all over the world, listed scrupulously one by one), it opens
a wide field for analysis and comparisons for cataloguing managers,
collection building specialists and higher education administrators. For us
librarians it is an example of best cataloguing practice. With WorldCat
accessible at a click, librarians can easily include electronic resources,
media or special collections items in their files. And the files can no
longer do without the access points and advanced search techniques that
WorldCat offers.”
Eric van Lubeek, Director of Sales & Operations for OCLC PICA, says,
“WorldCat holds over 67 million bibliographic records from libraries across
the world and we are delighted to be able to include the NUKAT information
for Poland. Information on Polish authors and Polish library holdings is
now available to 9000 WorldCat users across the globe. We are also delighted
that so many of the Polish libraries which trialled FirstSearch have
subscribed and hope to see further interest from Polish institutions in
FirstSearch, as the libraries that have adopted it experience the benefits.”
For more information about OCLC PICA, contact: [log in to unmask]
- ends -
Notes to editors:
About NUKAT
www.nukat.edu.pl
NUKAT is a union catalogue of Polish academic and research libraries. There
are over 900 librarians from 58 libraries contributing to NUKAT. The NUKAT
database contains bibliographic records and authority records and all
bibliographic records from the former Union Catalog of Serials and all
authority records from the former Union Authority File.
About OCLC PICA
OCLC PICA is a leading supplier of software solutions, content and services
to libraries. Professionals and end users in academic and public libraries,
the health sector, as well as government and cultural institutions worldwide
benefit from its services. These include its own union catalogue and
resource sharing solutions, integrated library systems and portal products.
In Europe and southern Africa, OCLC PICA also offers the full range of OCLC
products and services for cataloguing, eBooks, collection and digital
content management and virtual reference services.
OCLC PICA B.V. is jointly owned by OCLC Inc. and Stichting Pica. OCLC is a
not-for-profit organization and offers its services to 54,000 libraries
worldwide. Stichting Pica (est. 1969) is a foundation that promotes and
encourages the scientific and public information service in the Netherlands.
OCLC PICA has its headquarters in Leiden, the Netherlands, with offices in
the UK, Germany, France, Switzerland, the USA and Australia. More
information about OCLC PICA can be found at http://www.oclcpica.org/.
OCLC PICA incorporates OCLC Europe, PICA (a key service-provider in the
library infrastructure of the Netherlands), SISIS (the leading
library-automation company in Germany) and Fretwell-Downing Informatics (a
leading international provider of library automation and resource-sharing
solutions).
For further information, contact:
Fiona Leslie
Marketing Executive
OCLC PICA
Tel: +44 (0) 121 456 4656
[log in to unmask]
---------------------------------
Catherine Dhanjal, MCIPR
TheAnswer Ltd
PR & marketing specialist
Tel: 01883 650434 or 0794 166 9925
[log in to unmask]
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