LEIDEN, the Netherlands, 19 April 2023—OCLC and Spanish Public Administration special libraries are partnering to develop BIBLESPAGE (Bibliotecas Especializadas de la Administración General del Estado), a union catalog of the libraries' resources built on the WorldCat Discovery platform. Fourteen libraries are currently participating in the catalog and more are expected to join soon.

Among the participating libraries are the Ministries of Education, Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, Culture and Sports, Labor, Industry and Tourism, Transportation, Presidency, and Territory Policies, as well as libraries of other public bodies such as the Bank of Spain and the Spanish Tourism Documentation Center (TURESPAÑA).

BIBLESPAGE provides a single entry point to the libraries' collections, improving the discoverability of resources and increasing the web visibility of their important specialized collections, providing greater relevance for both researchers and the institutions' civil servants.

"One of the decisive elements that made us select OCLC as a partner was their understanding of librarians," said Elena Escolano, Head of the Central Library, Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transition. "OCLC will also make it easier for us to manage duplicate records, improve the quality of records and the display of search results in a unified way. This influences the visibility that the WorldCat Discovery platform provides for catalogs."

"These days, public civil servants, researchers, and the general public use digital tools and online search systems for all their queries," Escolano continued. "Gathering the catalogs of public administration libraries in one place, making them more visible, is essential, especially for ministry libraries – to reposition themselves as a reference and go-to search point to support the public administration activity in the digital world."

As part of OCLC's web visibility program, BIBLESPAGE libraries' collections are more visible on the web through WorldCat.org, and through a wide variety of search engines and other popular websites.

OCLC has broad international experience in library cooperation projects among libraries with shared needs, such as accessibility and web visibility. The Art Discovery Group Catalogue, one of the most extensive open catalogs of art resources for researchers, is a similar project that is also built on the WorldCat Discovery platform.

BIBLESPAGE is built on the WorldCat Discovery platform, the discovery solution developed by OCLC that facilitates the search for electronic and physical resources in an intuitive environment.

"Setting up a group catalog such as BIBLESPAGE is a model that we hope to use with other groups of libraries and also in other countries in Europe. It requires coordination among the participating parts, but we already have the technology and platform in place to make it possible," said Eric van Lubeek, Vice President and Managing Director, OCLC EMEA & APAC.

A BIBLESPAGE webpage has been created to describe its mission and list current participants. The page also includes a form to request more information on how to join.