PARIS, 21 September 2009—OCLC and ABES (l’Agence Bibliographique de l’Enseignement Supérieur), in France, have signed an agreement to load 9 million records from Système Universitaire de documentation (Sudoc), the cataloguing system for French academic libraries managed by ABES, into WorldCat, the largest global online resource for finding information in libraries. As a result of this agreement, collections of 110 participating Sudoc institutions that represent over 1,000 libraries will be visible to searchers worldwide through WorldCat.org.
The addition of Sudoc records in WorldCat, planned for the first quarter of 2010, will increase visibility of collections from the French academic world.
In addition to the valuable worldwide, online visibility of their records, participating in WorldCat brings the Sudoc libraries more benefits. "Thanks to their contribution, the libraries become OCLC members," says Raymond Bérard, director of the ABES, "and as such they can, for example, use the WorldCat API to develop their own specific applications. Further, as OCLC members, these Sudoc libraries can vote on a regional level in the OCLC governance structure."
"We are very pleased that ABES has agreed to contribute these records to WorldCat," says Rein van Charldorp, managing director of OCLC in Europe, Middle East and Africa. "OCLC has been working with ABES for more than 10 years now and this further extension of our cooperation is the logical next step. The worldwide library community will benefit significantly from the enrichment of WorldCat with the Sudoc titles."
The agreement to load Sudoc records into WorldCat follows that of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), which signed a similar agreement in June of this year. Since 2002, ABES has been cataloguing with Sudoc, which is based on OCLC's Central Bibliographic System (CBS). Loading CBS records into WorldCat makes possible the option for real-time updates from CBS into WorldCat, via SRU update, which is currently being used effectively for the Dutch union catalogue and the union catalogue of Australia.
With Sudoc records in the WorldCat database, these libraries are able to use other useful and efficient tools such as WorldCat Collection Analysis, which allows libraries to compare their collections with those of peer libraries. Visit the OCLC Web site to find more learn more about WorldCat.
About ABES
ABES (Agence Bibliographique de l'Enseignement Supérieur) is the agency in charge of Sudoc (Système Universitaire de documentation), the Library Union Catalogue for the academic, specialist and Higher Education in France. ABES was created in 1994 with the aim of implementing Sudoc, which was launched in 2001 and has proved very successful, representing in excess of 9 million records of 1,100 libraries and their 28 million holdings. ABES received over 34 million queries in 2008, which makes Sudoc a premier one-stop point for supporting teaching and research via a freely available integrated catalogue.
About OCLC
Founded in 1967 and headquartered in Dublin, Ohio, OCLC is a nonprofit library service and research organization that has provided computer-based cataloging, reference, resource sharing, eContent, preservation, library management and Web services to 71,000 libraries in 112 countries and territories. OCLC and its member libraries worldwide have created and maintain WorldCat, the world’s richest online resource for finding library materials. Search WorldCat.org on the Web. For more information, visit the OCLC Web site.
