LEIDEN, Netherlands, 23 March 2023—Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam has signed on to use the Talis Aspire course resource list management system along with OCLC's WorldShare Management Services, their library services platform, so that faculty can easily create reading lists from the library collection for students to access quickly in compliance with local copyright requirements.

OCLC and Talis are partnering to offer Talis Aspire to WMS customers throughout the United States, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Australia, and New Zealand.

"It is one of our ambitions to help our users find and use the right resources in their education. With Talis Aspire we can integrate our library systems in the workflow of our teaching staff via the learning management system and give them, and our students, access to our library in a new way. Also, thanks to the implementation of Talis Aspire, our library gets a structured overview of the literature used. This helps us to improve our library services," said Sjors Keijzer, Project Leader, Educational Support at VU Amsterdam.

Founded in 1880, VU Amsterdam was a private initiative whose most prominent founder was Abraham Kuyper, a theologian, journalist, and politician, with the aim of establishing an independent university. While the institution started off small, it rapidly grew. Now serving more than 29,000 students, it has become an internationally renowned university focused on research, scientific, and value-driven education.

"Our goal is to enable library practitioners to make acquisition decisions as effectively and efficiently as possible by providing the right information within Talis Aspire and the system's interoperability with WMS enables that. We are thrilled that VU Amsterdam adopted Talis Aspire as its course resource list management system and our partnership with OCLC aims to deliver the same enhanced service to other WMS customers," said Scott Gibbens, Head of Product at Talis, Technology from Sage.

WorldShare Management Services (WMS) is a cloud-based platform with WorldCat as its foundation, which enables staff to better manage resources in all formats and to provide their users with improved access to the library's collections and the world's knowledge.

"We are delighted that VU Amsterdam has implemented Talis Aspire alongside WMS. The interoperability between the two services will mean that they can better manage the acquisition, use, and retention of materials both in person and online," said Eric van Lubeek, Vice President, Managing Director, OCLC EMEA & APAC.