OCLC and SWRLS announce major collaboration using WorldCat Local

7 October 2009, Birmingham, UK: OCLC and the South West Regional Library
Service (SWRLS) today announced a collaboration that will initially see
seven public library authorities in the South West of England using WorldCat
Local as their shared end user discovery service in 2010. 

Library authorities in Bournemouth, Bath & NE Somerset, Bristol, North
Somerset, Somerset, South Gloucestershire and Plymouth are working with OCLC
to implement a discovery interface that will enable users to search and
place reservations on materials held across the South West region.  The
service is a replacement for Wisdom, formerly supplied by DS Ltd, now part
of the Axiell Group.  By adopting this approach, the libraries will also
raise their profile on the Web by becoming visible in WorldCat.org, the Web
destination for discovery of library resources. 

Rob Froud OBE, Head of Cultural Service at Somerset County Council and
Chairman of the SWRLS Management Board said of the announcement: “We opted
to work with OCLC because we sought a service our library customers would
view instantly as highly attractive and easy-to-use.  Our library staff are
also served by having a solution that is technically robust and simple to
implement.”  Asked whether he felt other libraries in the region might join
at a later stage, Mr Froud said: “Other libraries have expressed an
intention to join and it is our hope they will do so soon, but we are very
happy with the initial roll-out as it is another demonstration that the
model of collaborative working across public library authorities is thriving.”

The libraries, through their participation in UnityUK, are already regularly
updating their bibliographic and holdings information, which OCLC then
uploads to WorldCat.  This facilitated records transfer has opened up the
potential for them to utilise services built on the WorldCat platform,
including WorldCat Local.  The seven SWRLS libraries will have their own
individualised Web discovery interface reflecting their libraries’ branding
and holdings switched on.  Each interface will also present real-time
holdings information from the other participating libraries to quicken the
time it takes for users to locate items of interest.  Requests will then be
managed by the libraries’ underlying management systems, in this case
Axiell’s Galaxy and Talis Alto.  Inter-library loan requests by SWRLS
libraries are managed by UnityUK.  

The decision by libraries in the South West to adopt WorldCat Local as a
shared service comes at a time when public libraries across the country are
joining up service provision.  In September, the Society of Chief Librarians
announced an initiative to allow members of a library to borrow books from
any of 4000 libraries in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.  And, as has
been widely reported, the government is planning a national request service
backed up by home delivery in an attempt to reinvigorate the public’s
perception of libraries.  

For more information on WorldCat Local, go to:
www.oclc.org/uk/en/worldcatlocal/  


About SWRLS
South Western Regional Library Service was founded in 1937 as a charitable
organisation, and exists to act as an advocate for, and to promote
cooperation between, the libraries across all sectors in the South West.

There are currently 56 members of SWRLS, consisting of public library
authorities, academic and special libraries and around 25,000 interlibrary
loan transactions are carried out annually between them.

For further information see the website at www.swrls.org.uk

About OCLC

Founded in 1967 and headquartered in Dublin, Ohio, OCLC is a nonprofit
library service and research organization that has provided computer-based
cataloging, reference, resource sharing, eContent, preservation, library
management and Web services to 71,000 libraries in 112 countries and
territories. OCLC and its member libraries worldwide have created and
maintain WorldCat, the world’s richest online resource for finding library
materials. Search WorldCat.org on the Web at www.worldcat.org. For more
information, visit www.oclc.org


FOR MORE INFORMATION:

Fiona Leslie: +44 121 456 4656
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