New organizations add value to the cooperative

We are constantly looking for resources that add value to the OCLC cooperative. In the past year, OCLC has acquired three organizations that will assist us in the pursuit of our mission and strategic objectives. At this writing, the boards of RLG and OCLC have proposed that RLG be combined with OCLC. Let me review each of these alliances.

In June 2005, OCLC PICA acquired Sisis Informationssysteme, a provider of library systems and portals in Germany, Switzerland and The Netherlands. Sisis systems support acquisitions, cataloging, circulation, interlibrary loan and Web OPACs. Norbert Weinberger is Managing Director of Sisis, which has 47 employees and is based in Munich.

In November 2005, OCLC PICA acquired Fretwell-Downing Informatics (FDI), an information discovery, library management and knowledge delivery organization with 77 employees. Based in Sheffield, U.K., FDI has additional offices in Australia, The Netherlands and the U.S. Robin Murray, Managing Director, FDI, spoke at the February OCLC Members Council meeting.

In December 2005, OCLC acquired the assets of Openly Informatics, which provides linking software and a database some 1.2 million metadata records with links to electronic resources. Eight Openly staff members continue to operate from their offices in Bloomfield, New Jersey, and Eric Hellman, the Founder and President of Openly Informatics, continues to lead the organization as Director, Openly Informatics Division as part of OCLC’s Global Product Architecture group.

We are already generating new synergies with these organizations. Let me cite some examples:

• Sisis and OCLC PICA are now providing their German-speaking users with improved service and support as well as faster updates and enhancements in local and centralized library systems in Europe.

• FDI and OCLC PICA are now developing the next phase of the UnityWeb resource sharing and interlibrary loan service for The Combined Regions (TCR) of libraries in Scotland and part of England.

• We are looking at ways to enhance our resource sharing offerings by combining the capabilities of FDI’s VDX, WorldCat Resource Sharing and ILLiad Resource Sharing Management software.

• Openly Informatics has accelerated our progress with the eSerials Holdings pilot, which will become a production eSerials Holdings service in July that will automatically update eSerials holdings in WorldCat for individual libraries.

Last, but not least, on May 3, the boards of RLG and OCLC proposed to combine the two organizations, integrating services and bringing forward RLG’s program initiatives as new unit within OCLC, to be called RLG Programs, which will work alongside OCLC Research. The coming together of the two organizations will enhance their abilities to serve the needs of the global community of libraries, archives, museums and other research organizations. We—RLG and OCLC—will be able to focus increased resources on developing new services and products while combining overlapping offerings and achieving economies of scale. If approved by RLG members, this merger will take effect July 1, 2006. The proposed alliance of RLG and OCLC will add yet another dimension to the OCLC cooperative.

In pursuing alliances we look for opportunities that are consistent with OCLC’s public purposes and that will lead to new or better services, to new markets or to lower costs for member libraries. Each of these alliances meets those criteria. We look forward to building an exciting future with our new colleagues as we continue to add value to the OCLC cooperative.

Jay Jordan
OCLC President and Chief Executive Officer

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