How something small can lead to something big

By Janet Lees and Ralph Münzenmayer

When Pica set out to coordinate the joint catalog building between 13 Dutch university libraries and the national library at the end of the 1960s, no one imagined the foundation would grow into the powerful and impressive multinational company it is today. After all, that was not the intention: all the cooperative wanted was to make a leap in efficiency, and computerize and centralize the various cataloging efforts. It is no coincidence they were doing this with an eye toward what
OCLC had already started a few years before.

OCLC PICA originates in The Netherlands. The Dutch GGC central database, running on CBS, is visible through WorldCat Discovery and is part of the Open WorldCat pilot.

The initial project turned into a real organization, quite successful at developing solutions for centralized cataloging (CBS) as well as local library management (LBS). After a period of supplying only libraries in The Netherlands, in the early 1990s Pica ventured into Germany and France, because that expansion was the only way to create the necessary funds for new developments. And, after working with OCLC on several small projects, at the turn of the millennium a closer cooperation led to a much more solid arrangement when OCLC acquired a majority interest in Pica B.V. Eventually, after merging with the OCLC

The U.K. is one of the European countries that uses OCLC services for cataloging. LinkUK libraries’ holdings are now visible through WorldCat Discovery. LinkUK and UnityUK use CBS.

Europe, Middle East and Africa operation, Pica became OCLC PICA in 2002—an organization with about 100 employees in The Netherlands, United Kingdom and France. Apart from marketing its own solutions globally, OCLC PICA distributes OCLC services in Europe and Southern Africa. One of the strategies that contributed strongly to OCLC PICA’s market position is the comprehensive cooperation with local partners.

Leveraging resources through cooperation

The year 2005 saw three major changes for OCLC PICA: a majority share in Strata Preservation was taken over from OCLC, Sisis Informationssysteme (Germany) and Fretwell-Downing Informatics (U.K.) were acquired, and the organization doubled its size to some 250 employees. Its geographic presence grew, because offices in the U.K., Germany, Switzerland, Australia and even the USA, were part of those acquisitions. More importantly, however, along with the acquisitions came additional resources that are being leveraged to speed system development, increase product and service quality and open up new market opportunities—in other words, to make the users benefit even more.

Throughout its 35-year history, the principle of cooperation has always been what makes OCLC PICA thrive. First it was librarians, then its partners and now it is the cooperation among the various newly acquired organizations and their solutions. In addition, new ways of cooperation have started with OCLC. One of those ways is linking the OCLC PICA users’ catalogs with WorldCat.

A number of OCLC PICA’s partners are in Germany: GBV, HEBIS, BSZ and DDB. OCLC PICA’s CBS, LBS and Sisis-SunRise systems are well represented in Germany.

The bibliographic landscape in the OCLC PICA region is varied. In most countries there are regional and/or national union catalogs that reflect national cataloging rules and formats and that serve local libraries through a variety of business models: government-funded (free at point of use), cooperative and for-profit. There is little connectivity between union catalogs except at the national library level. Additionally some individual libraries and groups—predominantly from the U.K., Scandinavian countries and South Africa—use OCLC for cataloging and their holdings are included in WorldCat, but these holdings have up to now been neither complete nor comprehensive.

More European materials visible online

ABES, which supplies access to the French university documentation and catalog system SUDOC, is an OCLC PICA partner using CBS.

WorldCat Discovery is OCLC PICA’s approach to providing wider coverage of European library collections to users around the world while retaining the union catalogs’ national role, integrity and authority. As a distributor for its regions, OCLC PICA establishes an agreement between OCLC and the union catalog owners for the exchange of bibliographic records that enables the member libraries of these union catalogs to become OCLC members; to be able to utilize OCLC services like WorldCat Discovery and become active within the global cooperative. The bibliographic records and holdings contributed through WorldCat Discovery become accessible to all OCLC member libraries and through services such as FirstSearch and Open WorldCat the great treasures and local materials of OCLC PICA’s associates become more visible to library users worldwide. WorldCat Discovery is complementary to the traditional approach of WorldCat.

The National Library of Australia implemented OCLC PICA’s CBS system as the central engine of its new Libraries Australia service.

The records and holdings of some national groups like LinkUK—a group of about 75 public libraries in the U.K.—and union catalogs like the Dutch GGC central database are being loaded into WorldCat. As a consequence of the WorldCat Discovery concept it is expected that a number of other national union catalogs will also follow as well as major individual libraries.

The first benefit of loading these additional records is to increase the coverage of library holdings in key European countries—initially The Netherlands, the U.K. and Germany—in Open WorldCat. OCLC PICA has announced a pilot program for Open WorldCat in these countries that will be conducted during 2006. During the pilot, OCLC PICA and invited libraries in these countries will be testing enhancements, such as interface translations and the inclusion of postal code information specific to these countries.

The tight linking of OCLC PICA local and central system solutions with the global services of OCLC provides a close synergy between the two organizations that can deliver local, national and global solutions for libraries. And once again it shows how something small can lead to something big.

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