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discovery to research and learning at all levels”
where we’re trying to get to with NBK,’ says Grindley. ‘We’re aiming to provide an exhaustive catalogue of materials, so end- users are confident that they’re getting a true picture of all resources available in UK libraries. I think that’s a compelling value proposition for researchers.’ Axel Kaschte, product strategy director
for EMEA at OCLC, says: ‘With data reuse, UK librarians can connect to the NBK and download bibliographic records, many of which will be merged master records, bringing together every field catalogued by every contributing library. The bigger the community, the greater the quality and efficiency gains can be.’
Global visibility with
WorldCat.org A significant benefit of contributing data to NBK is the global visibility that OCLC’s
WorldCat.org will give to library collections. ‘We upload NBK data to
WorldCat.org, which holds library data from around the world,’ says Axel. ‘From
WorldCat.org, OCLC syndicates data to sites such as Google and Wikipedia. We create links back to the contributing library from those sites – an important service.’ Jisc shares OCLC’s appreciation of the
rare and unique materials, and in some cases have discovered that collections are stronger than they realised. With full coverage of all UK academic and specialist libraries, the NBK promises to make these processes fully transformative. The British Library’s Wilson envisages
even more efficiencies: ‘At a time when publishers offer the same content via multiple options, libraries must avoid acquiring duplicate material. Grouping library holdings and publisher data together and standardising them should make that easier. It may also help to identify new opportunities for collaborative purchasing.’
Core functions – discovery and cataloguing Two pilot services, Library Hub Discover and Cataloguing are available now. With Cataloguing, NBK organisations can download and use MARC records for their
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library catalogue. Discovery is open to everybody worldwide, and is free at the point of use. The Discover interface will provide a single point of reference for UK resources – encompassing monographs (previously covered by Copac) and journals (replacing SUNCAT, Jisc’s journal search tool). Jisc plans to retire both Copac and SUNCAT at the end of July. ‘The NBK will be much more
comprehensive than the current services,’ says Ruddock. ‘At present, Copac covers just over 100 libraries and SUNCAT has contributions from 117 libraries. With the NBK, we’re aiming for more than 200 libraries. And with OCLC helping to process the metadata, the NBK team will be freed up to work on further developments.’ The NBK recognises the value of
resource discovery to research and learning at all levels. ‘The ease of discovering all materials in one place is
value of global visibility. ‘It’s wonderful to make libraries more visible on the web,’ Ruddock says. Prosser sees this international dimension as important. ‘Research is global,’ he says, ‘We want to be able to compare locally and nationally, but we also want to think more widely and internationally.’
A collaborative community behind NBK The international perspective was key to selecting OCLC as a strategic partner for NBK. ‘We chose OCLC for that reason – and for their track record of bibliographic innovation and handling large volumes of data,’ says Prosser. However, the NBK is more than a
partnership. ‘It has come from community need and it’s driven by the community, for the community,’ Ruddock concludes. ‘Community involvement in the UK – not just in contributing data but in steering the NBK – is invaluable to us, and we’d like to thank everybody who has participated so far.’
April/May 2019 Research Information 39
“The NBK recognises the value of resource
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