A Discovery Health Wellness Day was held at Sabinet on 1 December 2011.  The day involved screening tests and an online questionnaire to help learn about your health.

The registration started at 09:00, each session took approximately 10 -12 min per person. The following assessments were done:

• HIV
• blood pressure
• glucose
• BMI (body mass index)
• cholesterol
• weight
• height

The wellness day was well attended by the Sabinet staff.

Dear OCLC Member,

The world that libraries serve, and operate within, is shaped by the Web. The Web makes it possible to now apply the dimensions of geography and scope to almost every decision we make. We can tap into tools and resources, and serve communities that are global, national, regional, local and personal. Barriers have been lifted on how we can communicate, conduct research, share information and deliver services.

The Web offers unprecedented opportunities for us to work together toward our vision of the world’s libraries, connected. I am writing today to preview our plans to advance this vision, and together leverage the full power of the Web.

Cooperating at Webscale

In November, OCLC Global Council delegates representing 17 countries convened in Dublin, Ohio, to provide strategic advice and guidance to OCLC. Delegates outlined opportunities and challenges that are redefining libraries. Delegates explored how library users will be best served in this connected world and advised OCLC on the most important roles the Cooperative should pursue in this new environment. It was a robust and lively conversation.

Delegates discussed expanded, radical forms of collaboration. They described new methods of cooperation and different types of partnerships supported by cloud-based technologies, innovative Web services and increased engagement with library users and scholars. Delegates recognized the unique opportunities that libraries now have to collaborate and deliver services together.

We can already see many examples of libraries working together to envision new services and new approaches to services that leverage the power of the Web. Nonprofit organizations and cross-organizational initiatives such as HathiTrust, DuraSpace, JSTOR, Europeana and the emerging efforts of the Digital Public Library of America, to name just a few, have been created by librarians, museums, universities, consortia and policy and civic groups to pioneer new approaches to service and education. We are already seeing the advantages of increased visibility of collections and cost saving through shared operations—what we call “operating and innovating at Webscale.” But we need to do more.

Global Council delegates and the Board of Trustees encourage OCLC to extend the scope and number of partnerships with these and other initiatives. And they urge us to accelerate our efforts to provide the global services and platforms needed to help realize the potential for libraries to cooperate at Webscale.

OCLC members created the foundation to support this vision, and our work has been under way for more than a decade. In 2000, we published the strategy document “Weaving the Web into libraries and weaving libraries into the Web,” helping provide focus for our work on the Web. In 2005, we leveraged the combined influence of thousands of member libraries to build strategic partnerships with Google, Yahoo! and other search engines to ensure that libraries’ collections were made visible on the Web through the Open WorldCat initiative. In 2006, this Web connection was expanded to include a new library “hub,” WorldCat.org, adding another option for information seekers to access library services and collections. In 2007, we launched WorldCat Local to provide library users with both a global view of the collective library collections, as well as a local view of the library materials held by their primary institution—allowing users to scale their search using the power of the Web to create the information service that best matched their needs.

Since 2009, OCLC members, staff and advisory group participants have been working together to develop Webscale Management Services to create a new paradigm for how library management services can be delivered using the advantages of the Web, collaboration and cloud-based infrastructure. Thanks to the flexibility that the Web architecture and community engagement provides, early adopters and advisory committee members have been engaged with OCLC staff to guide and inform the development and create continuous innovations to these services.

Our Next Steps – OCLC WorldShare

Today we are launching the OCLC WorldShare Platform, a shared technical infrastructure that will support a growing number of OCLC services and applications. This platform will enable library developers, partners and other organizations to create, configure and share a wide range of applications that deliver new functionality and value for libraries and their users.

The OCLC WorldShare Platform facilitates collaboration and app-sharing across the library community so that libraries can combine library-built applications, partner-built applications and OCLC-built applications. This enables the benefits of each single solution to be shared broadly throughout the library community.

In the coming weeks, participants from platform pilot libraries will work with members of the OCLC Developer Network to help create and build new applications to populate the new OCLC WorldShare App Gallery, where users will be able to see available apps and install them into current work environments. Developers can showcase their creativity, partners can create add-on functionality and library staff can find practical, everyday solutions to streamline and enhance their workflows.

The first services built on this new technical infrastructure are Webscale Management Services, which have been rebranded as OCLC WorldShare Management Services, and include circulation, acquisitions and license management applications. Today, more than 30 libraries are already using OCLC WorldShare Management Services, and more than 150 libraries worldwide have committed to the new service since September 2010.

Over time, we will bring together additional OCLC services and applications under the OCLC WorldShare name, including resource sharing, consortial borrowing, metadata management and other applications. OCLC’s currently deployed library management solutions will continue to be maintained and enhanced in line with our libraries’ ongoing requirements under their current brand names.

WorldCat will continue to serve as the name for shared data, including registries and the knowledge base, as well as discovery services such as WorldCat.org and WorldCat Local.

Finally, we are taking the first steps in a migration to cloud computing for service delivery. OCLC currently operates data centers located in the United States. The first data center outside the United States will be available in the United Kingdom this week. Additional data centers will be deployed in continental Europe, Australia and Canada in the coming year. Data centers around the world will support performance, reliability and scalability in our increasingly global Cooperative.

Upcoming Discussions

This next step in our strategy to advance the OCLC vision and mission, like all the work of the Cooperative, is yours to evaluate, advance and improve. Please take some time to review our full discussion document, Libraries at Webscale, and visit our website for more details about OCLC WorldShare. We look forward to hearing your thoughts and feedback at the upcoming Americas Regional Council meeting on January 20, and at the EMEA Regional Council meeting February 28–29. If you are unable to attend a regional council meeting in person, we hope you’ll attend one of our upcoming webinars, where we’ll discuss our emerging plans with members, collecting and incorporating feedback into our new services. We’ll keep you informed of the dates and times of these events as they approach.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me personally with your questions or comments. We look forward to working together with our members and all libraries as we begin a new era of library cooperation—at Webscale.

Sincerely,

Jay Jordan
OCLC President and Chief Executive Officer

We are planning to start a discussion group with the core function digitization.  The discussion will eventually be through this listserve (digitsa@kendy.up.ac.za) and then posted to the Heritage Foundations Blog.  Some of the discussions might focus on, but not necessary be limited to:

1.  How to choose a project

2.  Selection criteria

3.  Handling of physical material

4.  Digital imaging/resolution and bit depth/colour management and scanning processes

5.  Software needed to get the best from you scanned project without wasting too much time

6.  Description metadata and the management of a spreadsheet for statistical purposes

7.  Risk management and the sustaining of your project

8.  Possible funding

9.  All aspects of digitisation and digital preservation that you want to touch on

We also want to create a list of everything digitized in South Africa, those that are completed as well as those that we are currently busy working on.  Please help us to get a comprehensive list available online of the digital as well as physical holdings of heritage value in South Africa.

The Heritage Foundation has a webpage and blog (www.esdigit.org.za) where these information can be posted, just sign in and then you are part of the blog.  If possible make the collection you have completed openly accessible and thereby also support the “open access to information” movement.  By combining your collection online with those of another institution (building a link between the collections), you will contribute to a more comprehensive collection online. I will send through more information about this initiative in my next email.

Please feel free to make use of the discussion blog (www.esdigit.org.za ).  I will also post discussions from the listserve, which will be of interest to the heritage group, to the blog (www.esdigit.org.za ) and thereby give South African digitization as much exposure as possible.

Enlist to the discussion listserve by answering YES in the subject field of this email and introduce yourself by telling us a bit more about yourself and your work in the text field of the email.  We really want to create a community of interest that will work and be of help to each other.

For more information, please contact :

Ria Groenewald, University of Pretoria

Tel +(12) 420-3792, ria.groenewald@up.ac.za

1 November 2011
Sabinet Online Ltd, an information company facilitating access to information for more than 28 years, announced that as from 1 November 2011, the company will offer free access to South African legislation to small law firms in conjunction with the profession’s Law Library (formerly KwaZulu-Natal Law Society Library: www.lawlibrary.co.za). These small law firms will have to meet certain criteria to be able to qualify for this offer of one year’s free access to Sabinet’s NetLaw product.

Sabinet has been in discussions with the Law Library on how to assist small law firms who do not have the means to afford access to online legislation. Rosalind Hattingh, managing director of Sabinet said: “Our company is pleased to be in a position to offer easy and quick access to consolidated, updated online legislation to smaller law firms.”

The offer will be available to qualifying law firms from 1 November 2011 to 31 October 2012. The criteria for a law firm to qualify for this offer are:
- the law firm must be comprised of three (3) or fewer practising attorneys;
- their fidelity fund certificates and annual law society subscriptions must be up to date and paid in full;
- the law firm must already have internet connectivity to be able to make use of this online legislation product.

Additionally, the law firm must sign a service agreement and accept Sabinet’s terms and conditions.

Gavin McLachlan, Chairperson of the KZN Law Society Library Committee said: “I am looking forward to the implementation of this initiative which will certainly benefit our less advantaged members. We also look forward to working on future information access projects that we have discussed with Sabinet, which is a valued information partner of our Library.”

More about Sabinet:
Established in 1983, Sabinet is today a leader in facilitating access to electronic information. Over the past 28 years, the company has grown extensively to provide a wide range of products and services to diverse markets. Its product range includes legal products and services, library products and services, library management systems, electronic publications, content management services and digitisation services. Please visit: www.sabinet.co.za for more information, alternatively contact info@sabinet.co.za or 012 6439500.

The National Library of South Africa and 15 of the country’s most
prestigious academic institutions choose WorldCat Local

Birmingham, UK, 28 October 2011—OCLC and Sabinet, OCLC’s partner in South Africa, have signed an agreement to provide WorldCat Local, OCLC’s discovery service, as a single point of access and delivery of electronic, print and digital resources to the National Library of South Africa and 15 academic institutions, offering a simplified discovery and delivery experience to end-users.

Up to now, library users have needed to know which platform provides access to the information resources they are seeking. Having to navigate around several platforms has also made it difficult to discover the full range of electronic materials that the library has made available. With WorldCat Local, links to the full-text of licensed electronic content give users seamless access to all the library’s resources from a single search box. For the librarian, evaluation of those resources is greatly simplified by WorldCat Local’s aggregated presentation of usage statistics, making comparisons much easier.

As part of a recent agreement between OCLC and Sabinet, a major supplier of online information to libraries in sub-Saharan Africa, libraries will now be able to access Sabinet’s African content on WorldCat Local, as well as the OCLC-licensed resources already on the platform.

Where there is need to consult print items, WorldCat Local displays location and availability details.

Users of the system can also use inter-library loan services in instances where there is neither print nor electronic provision of the item required in a local library. In addition to OCLC’s WorldCat Resource Sharing service, WorldCat Local will also link to South Africa’s national inter-library loan system, managed by Sabinet. Together, these two services represent a significant expansion of library collections.

“What impresses these 16 South African libraries is the range of capabilities that WorldCat Local offers to meet their needs,” explains Rosalind Hattingh, Managing Director of Sabinet, which also operates as OCLC’s distributor in South Africa. “Access to electronic resources on a single platform is the most important of these, but the universities also highlighted the social features of the product. Students will be able to create and share lists of recommended items, and also tag items. And the availability of WorldCat Local on mobile devices was also very compelling.”

Eric van Lubeek, Managing Director, OCLC EMEA said: “WorldCat Local is used by institutions all over the world. The collaborative data and services that underpin WorldCat Local make it an ideal choice for institutional groups. Working with Sabinet, we have been able to provide a solution for South African libraries that will provide an optimal experience for their users.”

Efficiencies in implementation time mean that the majority of these libraries will go live with WorldCat Local in early 2012, in time for the return of students at the beginning of the academic year in February.

Rosalind concludes: “The product offers the capabilities and value that today’s national libraries and academic institutions are looking for. We’re confident that other libraries in the sub-Saharan region of Africa will also recognise the benefits that WorldCat Local and the OCLC-Sabinet partnership offer to their users.”

Established in 1983 and based in South Africa, Sabinet has worked in partnership with OCLC since 1995, acting as distributor for them in sub-Saharan Africa since 1997 when they also began cataloguing South African information resources onto the OCLC platform. This agreement was extended in 2000 to catalogue directly onto WorldCat. More information about Sabinet is available at
http://www.sabinet.co.za/.

The sixteen institutions who have so far adopted WorldCat Local are:

• Cape Peninsula University of Technology
• National Library of South Africa
• Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University
• North-West University
• Rhodes University
• Stellenbosch University
• Tshwane University of Technology
• University of Fort Hare
• University of KwaZulu-Natal
• Unisa
• University of Pretoria
• University of Venda
• University of the Western Cape
• University of the Witwatersrand
• Vaal University of Technology
• Walter Sisulu University

More information about WorldCat Local is available at http://www.oclc.org/worldcatlocal/.

About OCLC

Founded in 1967, OCLC is a nonprofit, membership, computer library service and research organization dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the world’s information and reducing library costs. More than 72,000 libraries in over 112 countries have used OCLC services to locate, acquire, catalog, lend, preserve and manage library materials. Researchers, students, faculty, scholars, professional librarians and other information seekers use OCLC services to obtain bibliographic, abstract and full-text information when and where they need it. OCLC and its member libraries cooperatively produce and maintain WorldCat, the world’s largest online database for discovery of library resources. Search WorldCat on the Web at www.worldcat.org.
For more information, visit www.oclc.org.

OCLC, WorldCat and WorldCat.org are trademarks/service marks of OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc.

Third-party product, service and business names are trademarks/service marks of their respective owners. 

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

Fiona Leslie +44 121 456 4656 – Fiona.Leslie@oclc.org

Bob Murphy +1 614 761 5136 – murphyb@oclc.org

The LIASA Librarian of the Year is a role model for the Library and Information Service community and librarians are recognized for the exceptional performance in the vital role that they fulfil.

On Thursday 6 October 2011, delegates, guests  both local and international, speakers and other VIPs from the 13th LIASA Annual Conference got together for the LIASA Conference Gala Dinner.  During this night of glitz and glamour the winners of the Librarian of the Year was announced. 

The finalists, all branch winners (Mpumalanga and the North West were not represented) who received a certificate of achievement were :

•  Eastern Cape – Ms Yolisa Soul
• Free State – Mr Stoffel Kok
• Gauteng North – Ms Elsabe Olivier
• Gauteng South – Ms Julia Paris
• KwaZulu-Natal – Ms Lucille Webster
• Limpopo – Ms Abigail Chuene
• Northern Cape – Ms Ingrid Henrici
• Western Cape – Ms Christelle Lubbe

Congratulations to Julia Paris (University of Johannesburg) from Gauteng South who was selected as the winner.  Christelle Lubbe (Belville Public Library) from the Western Cape was 2nd and Elsabe Olivier (University of Pretoria) from Gauteng North was awarded the 3rd prize.

Sabinet sponsored the 3rd prize which was awarded to Elsabe Olivier.  A surprised and elated Elsabe, said “As an international NDLTD Board member representing South Africa, I will in all probability use the money towards attending and possibly presenting at the 15th International Symposium on Electronic Theses and Dissertations to be held Peru, Lima in September 2012”.

Congratulations again to all the overall winners as well as the branch winners!

Regards

Rosalind Hattingh (Managing Director)

On Saturday 1 October, Sabinet proudly participated in the 2011 National Business Challenge Relay at Rietondale Park.

There were 3 running teams and 5 walking teams from Sabinet that entered this race. They were supported by their work colleagues……see pics.

The distance of the course was a standard 42.2 km marathon for the running teams and 21.1 km for the walking teams. The route was divided into 6 legs for the running teams and 3 legs for the walking teams. The distance of each leg was 7 km.

The walking and the running teams started together at 06:00 and the cut off time was 11:00.

Our participants each received a bronze medal as they were well within the cut-off time.

Well done to all the teams and the supporters!  A special thanks to Rachel Ntshudisane for organising the event – keep up the excellent work!