LEIDEN, Netherlands, 7 June 2011 - The Tilburg University Library, in Holland, has opted for OCLC's Web-scale Management Services (WMS) and WorldCat Local as its new library management solution and integrated discovery service. The Tilburg University Library will become the first in Europe to become operational with WMS, with a planned launch date of 1st June 2012.

An Important factor in the decision to go with OCLC's Web-scale Management Services was that Tilburg University feels comfortable in a "WorldCat future", with the specific Dutch environment on one side and world class players like Google Scholar & Books on the other. "Further it was important to us that with WMS, OCLC has shown us a working product with a good interface, excellent possibilities and a lot of potential. That completed the picture," said Marc van den Berg, Director Library and IT Services of Tilburg University. The library took its decision after an extensive exploration of the current market situation and of new developments, such as cloud computing and content integration - important elements to its staff and users.

"The Tilburg University Library has experience in developing systems and search engines and therefore we look forward to this new cooperation," Eric van Lubeek, OCLC EMEA Managing Director responds. "We see it as an acknowledgement of our strategic choices that Tilburg has opted for WMS and WorldCat Local. We think that working in the cloud and sharing data is the way forward for many university and higher education libraries to achieve efficiencies, lower operating costs and free up staff for unique local services and innovation."

By delivering services that are really at the network level, Web-scale Management Services from OCLC offers libraries the opportunity to share data and business processes, which up to now was not possible. Thanks to the service oriented architecture, libraries can develop their own customised applications for library management activities. Next, they can make those available to their colleagues on the open platform. This possibility to cooperate in innovation will lead to optimal utilisation of the joint data and knowledge.

With OCLC's Web-scale Management Services, the Tilburg University Library gets a solution with workflow management, electronic resource management and integrated licence management, in addition to traditional tools for online library management such as metadata management, acquisition and interlibrary loan. Cataloguing will be done – as before – in the national cataloguing system, GGC.

The discovery tool WorldCat Local offers the Tilburg University Library simple implementation, a central knowledge base, content independency, a growing number of databases and full integration with WMS.

Earlier, the Norwegian consortium BIBSYS signed an agreement for delivery of a solution based on Web-scale Management Services, that will be used from January 2013 by more than 100 of the university libraries, libraries of schools for higher education, research libraries and the national library that are consortium members.

About Tilburg University Library

The Tilburg University Library houses seven different collections under one roof, with a total of 800,000 printed volumes and access to over 20,000 electronic journals and 150 databases. Tilburg University, which dates back to 1927, has focused its research programmes on economics, business administration, law, social sciences, humanities and theology. The university has more than 13,000 students and over 1,000 academic staff.

About OCLC

Founded in 1967, OCLC is a non-profit, membership, computer library service and research organization dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the world's information and reducing library costs. More than 72,000 libraries in 171 countries have used OCLC services to locate, acquire, catalogue, lend, preserve and manage library materials. Researchers, students, faculty, scholars, professional librarians and other information seekers use OCLC services to obtain bibliographic, abstract and full-text information when and where they need it. OCLC and its member libraries cooperatively produce and maintain WorldCat, the world's largest online database for discovery of library resources. Search WorldCat.org on the Web. For more information, visit the OCLC Web site.