Mergers & Acquisitions
Since 1999, OCLC® has engaged in several mergers and acquisitions. The reasons are varied and include preserving member assets, expanding the membership and building presence outside the United States, enhancing current service offerings and reducing the development cost of new service offerings.
Preserving member assets
2003
CAPCON: In November 2003, OCLC agreed to acquire the assets and assume the liabilities of CAPCON, a District of Columbia nonprofit corporation that provided training and support for OCLC services to libraries in the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia. CAPCON became the OCLC CAPCON Service Center (and later OCLC Eastern), which continued to offer services to more than 300 libraries in the Washington, D.C. area until 2011, when OCLC centralized services to these libraries.
2002
NetLibrary, Inc. was a provider of e-books, e-textbooks and Internet-based content/collection management services. The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Colorado allowed OCLC to facilitate the continued delivery of e-books and electronic media to libraries in January 2002. OCLC’s purchase preserved the investment of over 6,000 libraries that had acquired e-books from NetLibrary, Inc. OCLC sold the e-textbook service to ProQuest in August 2002. OCLC operated the e-book service and added audiobooks to the offering during the next eight years as the industry matured. NetLibrary did not provide for full cost recovery for OCLC, and therefore OCLC sold the business in March 2010 to EBSCO.
1999
WLN was a nonprofit organization that provided online cataloging and resource sharing services to libraries in the Pacific Northwest. WLN was not financially viable in the long term and was unprepared for Year 2000, so OCLC was asked to merge with WLN effective January 1999. OCLC preserved the WLN offices as a regional service center in Lacey, Washington, until April 2009. Certain unique services that WLN provided were made available to all OCLC libraries.
Expanding the membership and building our presence outside the United States
2016
Ifnet: In July 2016, OCLC acquired Ifnet through its subsidiary OCLC EMEA B.V. Ifnet, formerly IF, was a leading distributor of library software and services in Italy for all types of libraries and documentation centers. Ifnet's activities include distribution and implementation of library automation software, library consultancy, conversions, training, cataloging services and subject heading and thesaurus projects.
2013
Huijsmans en Kuijpers Automatisering BV (HKA): In October 2013, OCLC BV acquired all shares of HKA, a Dutch organization that develops, implements, and manages systems for public libraries, educational, and cultural organizations. As of 1 July 2019, HKA BV and OCLC BV moved forward as one integrated organization under the name OCLC BV. More than 75 percent of public libraries in the Netherlands use the Wise system, which originated with HKA. At the same time, all public libraries in Flanders, the Dutch speaking part of Belgium, are moving to Wise as their unified public library system.
2011
BOND GmbH & Co. KG.: In April 2011, OCLC acquired the assets of German library system provider, BOND GmbH & Co. KG. Based in Böhl-Iggelheim, near Mannheim, BOND is a leading integrated system provider for public libraries in German-speaking countries.
2008
Amlib: Effective in July 2008, OCLC EMEA acquired the assets of Amlib, a Web-based library management system developed in Australia and implemented in more than 525 school, public and special libraries primarily in Australia, Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States. The acquisition complements the European library management systems that OCLC EMEA already provides to libraries.
2005
Fretwell-Downing Informatics (FDI): In November 2005, OCLC PICA purchased FDI, which provides services and tools for information discovery, library management and knowledge delivery. FDI is based in Sheffield, England, with offices in Australia, the Netherlands and the U.S. The acquisition included management and development talent that is employed by OCLC worldwide.
Sisis Informationssysteme GmbH (Sisis): In July 2005, OCLC PICA acquired Sisis, a provider of library management systems and portal software based in Oberhaching, Germany. The OCLC PICA Germany team provides users with improved service and support as well as faster updates and enhancements in local and centralized library systems in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. The team also provides development talent to projects at OCLC.
1999
PICA B.V. / OCLC EMEA B.V.: Stichting Pica (Foundation), a nonprofit foundation based in Leiden, the Netherlands, provided online cataloging, interlibrary loans, local library systems, reference and end-user services to libraries in the Netherlands, France and Germany. After Dutch tax authorities deemed certain activities to be taxable and not allowable under the "foundation" status, Stichting Pica approached OCLC. Their activities were similar to OCLC products and services, and the Foundation felt there was a synergy between the two organizations. OCLC was interested in the rich content in Europe for WorldCat® and the opportunity to have more presence in continental Europe. OCLC and the Pica Foundation established a jointly owned organization, Pica B.V. The Foundation owned the National Catalog of Dutch libraries and gave it to OCLC to manage with the proviso that OCLC maintain a copy in an escrow account. OCLC purchased 35% in 1999, 25% in 2000 and the remaining 40% on 1 July 2007, and then renamed the organization OCLC EMEA B.V. The acquisition allowed OCLC to expand its portfolio around a comprehensive set of products and services.
Enhancing current service offerings
2020
Capira Technologies: In July 2020, OCLC acquired Capira Technologies. Founded in 2012 by former library employees, Capira Technologies focused on developing customized mobile library apps with an intuitive patron experience. This acquisition adds software and mobile app solutions to the OCLC line of products that create a digital extension of the library with new ways to engage.
2017
Relais International, a leading interlibrary loan solution provider based in Ottawa, Canada, was acquired by OCLC in January 2017 to significantly increase resource sharing options and capabilities for both Relais customers and OCLC member libraries and groups worldwide. At the time of the acquisition, Relais D2D (Discovery to Delivery) was the market leader in consortial borrowing. It was a state-of-the-art solution consistent with OCLC’s vision for a new service to address the needs of consortial borrowing users.
2015
Sustainable Collection Services: In January 2015, OCLC announced the acquisition of Sustainable Collection Services, the industry leader in providing analysis and innovative services to help libraries manage their print collections. The combination of OCLC and SCS will accelerate our library members' efforts in collection management and shared print projects.
2006
The Research Libraries Group (RLG) and OCLC combined operations in July 2006. RLG was a nonprofit organization of over 150 research libraries, archives, museums and other cultural heritage institutions. OCLC integrated RLG's services in online cataloging, resource sharing and digitization/imaging with OCLC's and eliminated duplicative administrative services. RLG's program initiatives were continued as RLG Programs, a new division of OCLC Programs and Research that combined RLG's successful tradition of identifying issues and building consensus among research institutions with OCLC's research capacities and robust prototyping capabilities. The combined memberships represent a critical mass of libraries, museums, archives and other cultural heritage institutions.
2004
24/7: The 24/7 Reference service of the Metropolitan Cooperative Library System (MCLS), a cooperative located in Los Angeles, California, was combined with OCLC's QuestionPoint® service in August 2004 to create a more powerful suite of virtual reference tools. The combined service enabled library users to ask questions and get answers from qualified reference staff in real time on the Internet. On 31 May 2019, OCLC and Springshare signed an agreement to transfer the QuestionPoint 24/7 Reference Cooperative and all active QuestionPoint subscriptions to Springshare, a recognized leader in the development of reference software for libraries worldwide.
2000
LTS: In September 2000, OCLC acquired the Winnipeg, Manitoba-based Library Technical Services (LTS), which provided original and copy cataloging as well as physical processing of materials for libraries. LTS worked with our OCLC Canada office to better serve libraries in Canada.
Reducing development costs of new service offerings
2024
JJH Consulting was acquired by OCLC in June 2024. JJH Consulting was a firm that specialized in advising institutions of higher education on how to maximize the value of their enterprise resource planning business processes and the implementation of Workday enterprise systems and software. The acquisition expanded OCLC’s service profile and has enabled the organization to work with higher education institutions to help determine the best use of systems and services to fit their specific needs. OCLC’s consulting services as a Workday Partner has been rebranded as Synexis Consulting.
CloudLibrary was acquired by OCLC in April 2024. CloudLibrary is a platform that offers access to a wide variety of digital content through libraries. This acquisition is helping OCLC support public libraries in their efforts to successfully manage accelerated shifts to digital collections. Thousands of libraries in 20 countries rely on cloudLibrary to provide access to a rich collection of digital content including millions of ebooks and audio books as well as tens of thousands of magazines, digital newspapers, digital comics, and streaming media services in more than 50 languages. This acquisition expands OCLC’s service to public libraries and reinforces its commitment to increasing access to information.
2008
EZproxy: Effective in January 2008, OCLC acquired EZproxy® authentication and access software from Useful Utilities. EZproxy software allows libraries to manage access and authentication configurations through a proxy server so that library users do not have to make any configuration changes to their personal Web browsers.
2006
DiMeMa, Inc.: In August 2006, OCLC acquired DiMeMa, the organization that developed and supported CONTENTdm® software. CONTENTdm is software that stores, manages and delivers digital collections such as historical documents, photos, newspapers, audio and video on the Web. OCLC had distributed CONTENTdm software since 2002 to libraries, cultural heritage and other nonprofit organizations, which allowed them to manage their digital collections and make them accessible worldwide.
Openly Informatics: In January 2006, OCLC acquired Openly Informatics, Inc., which provided linking software and a database of some 1.2 million metadata records with links to electronic resources. Openly had an immediate impact by accelerating our development of the eSerials Holdings™ service, which was launched in July 2006.
2000
PAIS, Public Affairs Information Service, Inc. (a nonprofit organization publishing the PAIS International database) was merged into OCLC effective in January 2000. The database had been part of the OCLC FirstSearch® service and was offered that way until OCLC sold the PAIS business in November 2004.