The Bibliothèque nationale de France to add records to WorldCat
OCLC and the Bibliothèque nationale de France have signed an agreement to work cooperatively to add records from the French national library to OCLC WorldCat, the world's largest online resource for finding information in libraries.
The Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) and OCLC signed the agreement in Paris, setting in motion plans for OCLC to process an estimated 13.2 million bibliographic records from the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Once records are added to WorldCat, they will be more visible and accessible to Web users worldwide through WorldCat.org, the destination for search and discovery of library materials on the Web.
"The Bibliothèque nationale de France is willing to increase the audience of its cultural heritage materials. We are convinced that the contribution of our entire bibliographic catalogue to WorldCat is likely to enhance the value of the library collections," said Bruno Racine, President of BnF. "The bibliographic data of the BnF catalogue, one of the richest catalogues in the world, will be of great benefit to OCLC users."
OCLC and the Bibliothèque nationale de France have worked together on other projects, such as the cooperative effort to create the Virtual International Authority File (Fichier d'Autorité International Virtuel), which virtually combines multiple name authority files into a single name authority service, and French translations of the Dewey Decimal Classification system.