OBERHACHING, Germany, 1 July 2019—The Bibliotheksservice-Zentrum Baden-Wuerttemberg (BSZ) and Verbundzentrale des GBV (VZG) have announced the launch of a new joint initiative, K10plus. The new collaboration will result in the largest catalog for scientific libraries in Germany and is developed using OCLC's Syndeo, a suite of services that facilitates national and regional library collaboration.

The new K10plus union catalog brings together over 200 million holdings of print and digital media from academic libraries in 10 federal states, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, and other academic, research and cultural institutions. Partners include most German state universities and colleges, and institutions such as the Leibniz Institute, Helmholtz Centers and Max Planck Institutes.

For decades, OCLC has provided solutions that meet the needs of regional library collaboration. Syndeo services provide these two major groups with the tools they need to build and maintain bibliographic databases. The flexibility of the services allows them to accommodate multiple metadata types, entities and formats (from MARC21 and UNIMARC to any other freely definable format).

Syndeo includes components for online cataloging, management and import and export of bibliographic data and standard records, interlibrary loan and management of administrative data. Since the launch of the new K10plus, all cataloging is now being done in this new shared data pool and is automatically synchronized with the WorldCat database.

"We are well equipped for the digital future. K10plus is based on OCLC's proven technology. It offers a modern, flexible and scalable basis for a wide range of regional and supra-regional services and integration with global infrastructure, like WorldCat," said Reiner Diedrichs, Director of the VZG.

"With OCLC's Syndeo as the basis, we guarantee a collaborative system which is an important aspect of K10plus. The result is a modern and internationalized solution," said Dr. Ralf Goebel, Director of the BSZ.

"OCLC congratulates our partners GBV and BSZ on the successful launch of the K10plus and is pleased to be able to make a significant contribution to this successful collaboration. Our relationship has been built over many years, with tried and trusted technology forming the basis of our partnership. As information infrastructures for science and research transform, it is vital that the technologies we provide that underpin infrastructure are capable of scaling at the same speed," said Eric van Lubeek, Vice President & Managing Director, EMEA & APAC.

About BSZ ║GBV

The Library Service Center Baden-Wuerttemberg (BSZ) and the GBV (VZG) offices coordinate their activities across borders and functionally divide fields of action. BSZ and VZG see their cooperation as an important element in the implementation of the recommendations of the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Wissenschaftsrat (WR) on the reorientation of information infrastructures. More is on the website www.bszgbv.de.

Both competence centers jointly serve scientific libraries as well as archives and museums from the ten federal states of Baden-Württemberg, Bremen, Hamburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Lower Saxony, Saarland, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Schleswig-Holstein, Thuringia and the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. In addition, institutions at the federal level are added.

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.