OCLC, a US-based nonprofit, membership, computer library service and research organisation, and electronic research databases provider EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO) have signed an agreement to make EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS) interoperable with OCLC WorldShare Management Services. The move will enable libraries to use EDS as their discovery layer and WorldShare Management Services as their library management system.
Additionally, the companies are investigating working toward an integrated solution allowing WorldCat Local users who also subscribe to EDS to search and retrieve results from EDS within the WorldCat Local service.
Libraries using the integrated EDS-WMS solution will be able to perform cataloguing, acquisitions, license management and circulation in OCLC’s next generation cloud-based management system, while providing their patrons with the EDS discovery service as a user front end. OCLC and EBSCO are working together to integrate such key WMS functions into EDS as patron identity management, item availability, circulation and system configuration. Because libraries using this integrated solution will catalogue in WorldCat, users of EDS in this configuration will have the ability to access all of WorldCat.
