Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas
Serve the global research community through international visibility
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"WorldCat, the world's largest union library catalog, is home to the most important academic and scientific libraries. CSIC Libraries and Archives Network's catalog is referenced nationally and needed more international visibility, so it had to be part of an internationally referenced platform that is consulted every day by thousands of users from all countries."
Agnès Ponsati Obiols
Libraries and Archives Network Director, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas
The Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC, or Spanish National Research Council) Libraries and Archives Network plays a prominent role in the Spanish and global scientific research communities. Network Director Agnès Ponsati Obiols explained, "The CSIC, as a public research institution, has a mission to contribute to the scientific and social development of society. Its libraries contribute in various ways so that the CSIC can fulfill this mission. Making rich scientific documental heritage available to those who need it is one of them."
Staff at the CSIC Library and Archives added more than two million records to WorldCat® and implemented WorldShare® Interlibrary Loan (ILL) in order to increase the availability of their collections to the global scientific research community. "CSIC holds specialized bibliographic collections that deserve to be available for use by researchers around the world," said Agnès.
"Currently, you could say that something not on the Internet almost does not exist. CSIC collections have been visible and available to our network for several decades, but this integration with WorldCat will make them much more visible."
"CSIC has an institutional mandate for open-access publications and data derived from the activity of our researchers," said Agnès. "So the integration of our Digital.CSIC institutional repository with WorldCat is another important part of this collaboration." Thanks to OCLC's partnerships with leading online information sources, the open Digital.CSIC collection will be discoverable to more international researchers. "We find [WorldCat's] integration with Google Scholar especially interesting, as it is a platform widely used by researchers," she said. "From this integration, we also expect benefits at the level of discovery, visibility, and impact."
WorldShare ILL will also help the CSIC disseminate knowledge internationally. According to Agnès, "The CSIC occupies a prominent position as a document provider within the interlibrary lending services of Spanish libraries." In satisfaction surveys, she noted, researchers rank it among the CSIC's most valued services, and it continues to play a fundamental role in the advancement of scientific research. "Surely, our integration into WorldCat will help us to increase the international projection of this service and relaunch it with WorldShare ILL, contributing with our collections to providing the document wherever it is requested."
Services used by the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas
Location
- Madrid, Spain
- Largest public institution dedicated to research in Spain
- Part of the Information Resources for Research System (SIC), a network that includes the Unit of Information Resources for Research (URICI), 60 research libraries scattered in 10 autonomous regions of Spain, 14 science archives, and 4 external libraries belonging to other scientific foundations
- Generates approximately 20% of all scientific publications in Spain
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