National Library of Wales expands online collection with 295 eBooks

DUBLIN, Ohio, February 12, 2007—The National Library of Wales has supplemented its book collection with 295 eBooks on Welsh interests and culture from NetLibrary through OCLC PICA, enabling further remote access to its resources for over 350,000 registered users.

Robert Lacey, acquisitions librarian at the National Library's Department of Collection Services says, "The National Library of Wales has the world's largest collection of works about Wales and the other Celtic countries: books and pamphlets, archives and manuscripts, magazines and newspapers, paintings and photographs, microforms and ephemera. Also, as an important general reference library, we are constantly seeking to add to our electronic resources so that users from afar can access information at any time of day or night and the new eBooks are an excellent addition to our collection."

Users accessing the National Library of Wales’ website can link through to the ebooks via the library’s web catalogue.

NetLibrary, available from OCLC PICA, is an eContent provider. As of January 2007, NetLibrary has 15,000 customers in over 50 countries. NetLibrary acquires over 1500 new titles every month and is currently offering 127,000 titles from over 450 publishers.

OCLC PICA’s director of sales, Mark Carden added “The National Library of Wales joins a growing number of academic, public and special libraries in the UK that are developing their collections through the acquisition of eContent. There are nearly 100 libraries in the UK, who have chosen NetLibrary because of the breadth and diversity of its content.”

The National Library of Wales is a treasure-house of information for the people of Wales. It contains over 4 million printed volumes - books, periodicals, newspapers, official publications, maps, music - old and new, from many countries and different periods of history. It houses manuscripts and archives, pictures and photographs, posters and ephemera, collected nowadays in electronic as well as more traditional forms. In addition the Library has radio and TV recordings, films, videotapes and sound recordings ranging from wax cylinders to CDs - everything to reflect Wales and the Welsh people throughout the world.

NetLibrary is a single source for full-text eBooks, eAudiobooks and journals. The NetLibrary platform provides academic, public and special libraries with eContent solutions that support web-based research, reference and learning. Proven in more than 15,000 libraries worldwide, NetLibrary is one of the biggest and well-established solutions in the world. Materials are offered in a variety of languages from Chinese to Spanish from an ever-expanding number of leading publishers across the world.

As the European library cooperative, OCLC PICA offers a broad range of leading edge, high-tech solutions for professionals and end users of academic and public libraries, information centres of the government and health sector, museums, archives and other cultural institutions.

Thousands of patrons daily rely on OCLC PICA systems and services for efficient cataloguing, library management, retrieval, resource sharing, portals and preservation. OCLC PICA participates in a large number of important standardization platforms to make sure its users’ interests are best represented. OCLC PICA staff consists of IT professionals, formally trained librarians and other specialists.

About OCLC PICA
OCLC PICA B.V. has two share holders: OCLC Inc. and Stichting Pica. OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. (est. 1967) is a not-for-profit organisation and offers its services to 54,000 libraries worldwide. Stichting Pica (est. 1969) is a foundation that promotes and encourages the scientific and public information service in the Netherlands. From its head office in Leiden and regional offices in Oberhaching, Sheffield, Birmingham, Paris and Footscray, and the FDI USA office in Kansas City, OCLC PICA provides the solutions that it develops in Leiden, Oberhaching and Sheffield. It also represents the OCLC services in Europe, Turkey, Israel and Southern Africa.

About OCLC
Headquartered in Dublin, Ohio, OCLC Online Computer Library Center is a nonprofit organization that has provided computer-based cataloging, reference, resource sharing and preservation services to 57,000 libraries in 112 countries and territories.  For more information, visit www.oclc.org.

Headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, NetLibrary (www.netlibrary.com) is a division of OCLC.  NetLibrary provides content and technical delivery solutions to institutional libraries, corporations and government agencies that facilitate the purchase, management and distribution of research, reference, digital learning, and general interest content via Web-based technologies.  NetLibrary’s eContent solution is the most broadly adopted in the market, making the content of more than 400 publishers and eContent providers available through more than 14,000 libraries worldwide.

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