Leiden/Canberra, 22 December 2005 - On the last day of November, the National Library of Australia (NLA) celebrated the successful implementation of OCLC PICA's CBS software as the central motor of the new Libraries Australia service. The delivery of the new Libraries Australia service represents the culmination of a two year project offering innovation in resource discovery, co-operative cataloguing and resource sharing to Australian libraries and the communities they serve.
After the implementation, the cataloguing users of Libraries Australia saw a number of significant improvements over previous systems. "CBS meets our stringent requirements for online response time and data loading performance," says Rob Walls, project implementation manager at NLA. CBS can load a minimum of 10,000 records per hour with full duplicate detection and can export at 80 records per second. "Also it supports Unicode and input/editing of all non-roman scripts, which for the first time will allow all NBD data to be supported on the same system. CBS has strong data management capabilities including excellent support for duplicate record detection and resolution."
Further, NLA is pleased with OCLC PICA's cataloguing client WinIBW, which enables users to save whole records (not field-by-field) and supports easier importing of records from external databases.
Although the timetable for the implementation of the CBS software as the replacement engine for the NLA's National Bibliographic Database was very tight, the project was finished on time, on budget and to expectations. This was due in no small part to the very close working relationship that both parties established. "The success of our relationship with OCLC PICA echoes that other great Dutch venture in the southern hemisphere, the 1642 voyage of Abel Tasman - it has been a great team effort with a true sense of exploring new spaces," said Warwick Cathro, Assistant Director General at NLA.
About NLA
The National Library of Australia is the largest library and one of the most important research centres in the country. Through the Internet, exhibitions and publications, services provided by expert staff and new technologies, the Library ensures its magnificent collection of 7 million items is available to all. Libraries Australia is an invaluable resource that enables searching of the 39 million items that make up the combined catalogues of Australia's libraries.