Leiden/Konstanz, 9 February 2006 - End of 2005, on 19 December, 8 am, an OCLC PICA central library system CBS became fully operational within 1,200 libraries in the German states Baden-Württemberg, Saarland and Sachsen. The first catalogue entry in the new system was made at 8.02 am. Meanwhile the system has been well received by its users.
The successful implementation was celebrated with a ‘web cam party' and champagne in Konstanz and Leiden. "The system is running stable. Clearly the intensive training phase has paid off: the access numbers are rising and will soon have reached the usual level," said a proud Dr. Marion Mallmann-Biehler, chief librarian of Bibliotheksservice-Zentrum Baden-Württemberg, at this occasion. "The BSZ team has worked together in the most efficient way with OCLC PICA, that contributed substantially to this achievement thanks to an excellent project management."
"The project went definitely smoothly and was finalized on time," added OCLC PICA's project manager Frans Bouwmeester, "thanks to the very detailed specifications provided by BSZ staff to our development team and thanks to the extensive and valuable contributions from the expert BSZ staff during the development and implementation phase."
Since 1983, BSZ successfully has developed and maintained a union catalogue in cooperation with 1,200 libraries in South Western Germany (Baden-Württemberg, Saarland and Sachsen) joined in the Südwestdeutschen Bibliotheksverbund (SWB); in addition BSZ also offers local systems to its participants in libraries and museums, and manages the Digital Library.
In the spring of 2004, BSZ accepted OCLC PICA's offer for the implementation of the central library system CBS for online cataloguing and end-user access. Besides, BSZ was offered a full OCLC PICA partnership similar to the partnership agreements OCLC PICA has in Germany with GBV, DDB and Hebis. This means that BSZ staff participated actively in the implementation project and also that in future BSZ will participate in the regular partnership meetings and thus will contribute to OCLC PICA's future plans and new activities in Germany.
The OCLC PICA CBS will be used for the maintenance and expansion of the SWB union catalogue and as such contains functionality for batch import and export, online cataloguing and (end-)user access. However, CBS will be positioned as an open system allowing interactive communication with the local library systems and with the ILL-server that the libraries in the SWB currently use. For the (end-)user access to external databases the OCLC PICA PSI software will be used. Access to external databases will be possible via Z39.50; also access for local and regional portals to the SWB union catalogue will be offered via Z39.50.