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: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

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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                                                  

f.leslie@oclcpica.org