DUBLIN, Ohio, 18 June 2019—The Bureau de coopération interuniversitaire (BCI), a coalition of Québec universities, has selected OCLC's WorldShare Management Services as the library services platform for 17 of its members.
WorldShare Management Services (WMS) is a cloud-based library services platform with WorldCat as its foundation that allows library staff to draw on the collaborative data and work of libraries worldwide for more efficient workflows. WMS also enables staff to better manage resources in all formats and provide their users with improved access to the library's collections and the world's knowledge.
The selection of WMS followed a rigorous evaluation process that spanned more than a year. Among the BCI objectives for this innovative project: create a network with a single, shared platform for participating Québec university libraries; provide flexibility for individual institutions to maintain their identities; use the shared platform to expand cooperation among member libraries; and enhance the end-user experience through a merged union catalog within a bilingual environment.
"The partnership of the Québec university libraries is happy to work with OCLC on this project that will include much more than the acquisition of a technological infrastructure. The WMS environment will allow us to support even better our researchers, professors and students in their activities. The adoption of this new platform will help us to optimize our processes and our ability to work together, and will offer opportunities to improve and extend our services. This is a promising project for the university community of Québec," said Caroline Lessard, Directrice du soutien aux études et des bibliothèques à l'Université du Québec and President of the Sous-comité des bibliothèques du BCI.
"We are thrilled to welcome this BCI coalition of Québec university libraries to the WorldShare community," said Bruce Crocco, OCLC Vice President, Library Services for the Americas. "BCI's selection of WMS demonstrates OCLC's capacity to serve ARL, large academic and bilingual library groups. WMS will help Québec university libraries work collaboratively and more efficiently. WMS will also open up more opportunities for Québec university libraries to work with and benefit from the work of other libraries that are part of the worldwide WMS community."
OCLC and BCI have agreed to jointly develop a unique feature that will improve the searching experience of bilingual and multilingual users through a combination of tools using artificial intelligence, automated translation and the use of controlled vocabulary, such as the Répertoire des vedettes-matière (RVM). This new concept will prevent users from having to repeat the same searches in other languages to retrieve records.
Together, the coalition of Quebec university libraries holds 10 million print and electronic titles. The BCI partnership comprises French and English academic libraries. They will manage records in one union catalog for a bilingual community, circulating material among all partnership libraries when they go live with WMS.
BCI's move to WMS builds on several recent large-scale OCLC cooperative initiatives in Canada. Library and Archives Canada (LAC) is now using WorldShare Management Services as its platform to manage its library services and two authority files (French Names and Canadian Subject Headings). LAC went live with WMS, locally named Aurora, in December 2018. LAC is also using WorldCat as the foundation of Canada's new National Union Catalogue, Voilà, launched earlier in 2018. The University of Winnipeg (December 2018) and McGill University (May 2019) also recently started using WMS.
More about WorldShare Management Services is on the OCLC website.
About BCI
The Bureau de coopération interuniversitaire (BCI) is an organization representing Québec universities. Its mandate is centered on cooperation between the universities in Québec and on the provision of common services. BCI plays an essential role in optimizing the resources that Quebec invests in teaching and research at the university level.
About OCLC
OCLC is a nonprofit global library cooperative providing shared technology services, original research and community programs so that libraries can better fuel learning, research and innovation. Through OCLC, member libraries cooperatively produce and maintain WorldCat, the most comprehensive global network of data about library collections and services. Libraries gain efficiencies through OCLC's WorldShare, a complete set of library management applications and services built on an open, cloud-based platform. It is through collaboration and sharing of the world's collected knowledge that libraries can help people find answers they need to solve problems. Together as OCLC, member libraries, staff and partners make breakthroughs possible.