Our Library is part of OCLC, a nonprofit cooperative organization dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the world’s information and reducing information costs. This platform is a computer library service and research organization that provides all kind of information systems to tens of thousands of libraries and cultural institutions all over the world.
This platform provides a World Library Consortium, which helps our Library along with other libraries to expand their impact and create more value for their users by sharing knowledge, services, and collections. Using OCLC helps the Library support IE Community members in research, training, and services that simplify the technical challenges involved in collaboration.
With OCLC, our Library and other member libraries cooperatively produce and maintain WorldCat, the largest collective catalogue, providing immediate access to an extensive bibliographic database, used by libraries and their users as the basis to perform many functions: cataloging, interlibrary loan, union listing of serial and other holdings, collection assessment, and digital archiving. WorldCat Discovery is a cloud-based application that helps people easily find resources available at their library and in libraries worldwide through a single search. Library users and staff use their WorldCat Discovery instance to search the WorldCat database to identify materials they need and see where they are available.
You’ll be able to search through more than 548 million bibliographic records and more than 3.3M holdings, growing by second. Watch WorldCat grow here.
Although 39% of the records are in English, you can find holdings in 490 different languages, following German (12%), French (9%), Spanish (5%), and Chinese (3%) in the top 5.
OCLC reinvests all of its income into library research, programs, and product development. Last year, they invested a total of $41.7 million.
WMS is a complete cloud-based library management platform that supports our strategic priorities with actionable data and an experience designed with users in mind
We are proud to be members of OCLC since 2013, being the first institution in Spain and second in Europe to go live with WMS, as a pioneer library to implement a cutting edge tool.
Our Library, along with more than 300 libraries, is now live on Tipasa®, the world’s first cloud-based interlibrary loan management system. It offers improved accessibility such as Get-It-Now articles via Article Exchange or WorldCat knowledge base holdings, which borrowers can use to find electronic resources more quickly. They also supported community-driven enhancements to ensure libraries’ interlibrary loan activities could continue during the COVID-19 pandemic. These include lengthened aging periods for requests, the creation of OCLC profiled groups, and a community sourced map/tool to help libraries manage physical material returns.
Thanks to EZproxy, OCLC connects users to electronic content with a single login. EZproxy provides library patrons with permanent access to the electronic content they need, without having to remember multiple passwords and usernames. It connects to a wide variety of authentication services and content providers. You can connect to EZproxy using your existing credentials; then EZproxy connects, on your behalf, to your licensed databases. Providers observe that there are requests that come from an authorized IP address and therefore allow access.
They continued to add important global resources as well, partnering with Europeana, the digital platform for European cultural heritage, to add millions of records of digitized items to WorldCat, making this open content easily discoverable and freely accessible to readers, researchers, and students through libraries.