Norwegian consortium BIBSYS has signed an agreement with global library cooperative OCLC to deploy the latter's Web-scale Management Services for its new library system. The OCLC product is projected as a web-based suite of library management tools for metadata management, acquisitions, circulation, licence management and workflow.
BIBSYS provides library and information systems to Norway's university libraries, college libraries, a number of research libraries and the National Library. The latest agreement is the culmination of a review process over the course of a year to identify a replacement to the existing BIBSYS Library System.
According to BIBYS, an important factor in the decision to choose OCLC was that OCLC had started the process of developing a next-generation system, based on a service-oriented architecture, which has uniform handling of all media types. Because of the architecture, BIBSYS and its member libraries can expect to develop their own custom applications for library management activities. In addition, they can expose and share those applications as web services on the platform for other members to use. This ability to collectively innovate will purportedly generate cost savings, greater efficiency and the ability to better leverage collected data and intelligence.
OCLC's strategy is to move traditional library back-office operations and associated data to the network, sometimes called 'the cloud'. Web-scale Management Services are seen to integrate components such as acquisition, licence management and circulation with other OCLC services also operating at web-scale - including cooperative cataloguing through WorldCat and discovery through WorldCat Local - to leverage efficiencies, lower cost of ownership and free libraries to spend time on unique local services and innovations.
By delivering network-level services and not simply Internet-hosted solutions of current library services, OCLC's Web-scale Management Services are said to provide automation and management services to library organisations. This is seen to allow them to share data and workflows in ways never before possible.
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