Oberhaching, Germany -- 29 October 2008. The Bibliotheksverbund Bayern (Bavarian Library Consortium or BVB) have selected OCLC TouchPoint as the preferred solution for their portal "Gateway Bayern".

The BVB represents more than one-hundred libraries in Bavaria, and hosts on their behalf a union catalog with more than sixteen million title records. The BVB union catalog is maintained and updated on an Aleph system.

After a thorough review of the market, BVB selected TouchPoint as they felt it would meet the expectations of their users by providing a more "google-like" experience. The consortium was also keen that Gateway Bayern looked the same as other end user discovery services that individual libraries within the BVB had implemented. Many of the libraries within the consortium are already using TouchPoint in conjunction with a search engine from FAST.

The experience will be further enhanced with the use of OCLC WorldCat web services to give users of their libraries a chance to view lists and reviews that have been compiled by a worldwide network of library users in WorldCat.org.

Norbert Weinberger, Managing Director of OCLC GmbH said "We're delighted to provide with TouchPoint an efficient and up-to-date end user service to all Gateway Bayern users. The implementation of this service demonstrates that TouchPoint is a solution that supports not only OCLC management systems but also external ones."