Leading museum organisation in Australia selects OCLC's WorldShare Management Services
WMS offers flexible solutions to streamline specific needs of museum libraries
MELBOURNE, Australia, 7 June 2023—Museums Victoria, Australia's largest public museums organisation, has signed on to use OCLC's WorldShare Management Services (WMS) as their new library management system to integrate workflows and increase visibility and access to resources.
Museums Victoria operates three state-owned museums in Melbourne, Victoria: Melbourne Museum, Immigration Museum, and Scienceworks. The collection consists of over 15 million items and is an invaluable record of Victoria's environmental and cultural history. The Museums Victoria Library reflects the collecting areas of the museum since its foundation in 1854, and supports the current research needs of museum staff.
"We selected WMS so we would be connected to a global library community through OCLC. This will allow us to stay on top of the latest developments in the library sector, such as RDA, BIBFRAME and diversity and inclusion initiatives." said Hayley Webster, Manager, Library.
"WMS offers a good balance of up-to-date technology, user-friendly workflows, and the confidence of being with an innovative, library-centred organisation," Webster continued. "We believe the system is well-suited to a museum and special library context, as it offers all the benefits of a new generation library management system but can also be pared-back to suit the more traditional aspects of our service and the smaller scale of our collection."
Webster added, "With the change to WMS, Museums Victoria Library is excited to be making its online library catalogue publicly accessible for the first time."
"The Museums Victoria Library is still predominantly a print-based collection, however in recent years we have been moving towards electronic delivery of information where possible. WMS has allowed us to better integrate e-resources into our online catalogue, improving the experience for our end users. The ability to track e-resource use centrally will simplify reporting and save us time," said Webster.
WMS, a cloud-based library services platform, provides users with fast, reliable access to the library's collections and a worldwide network of knowledge. With WorldCat data as its foundation, libraries using WMS experience improved workflows and a streamline of routine tasks, including e-resource management and cataloguing.
"Museums Victoria Library offers a valuable collection reflective of Victoria's rich cultural history," said Eric van Lubeek, Vice President and Managing Director, OCLC EMEA & APAC. "We're delighted to welcome Museums Victoria to the WorldShare community. We're confident that WMS will increase the visibility and access to the Museums Victoria Library's rich collection, which will benefit libraries and researchers around the world."
About Museums Victoria
The Museums Victoria Library collection was first established in the 1850s as a working collection for the Museum's curators, and has developed into one of the best collections of natural history books and journals in Australia. The library was located at Melbourne University until 1899 when it moved, with the museum, to be co-located with the Public Library.
Today, the library collection is located at Melbourne Museum and contains 40,000 titles, which includes around 1,000 titles that are considered to be rare due to one or a combination of factors, including: value; scarcity; aesthetic qualities; historic, scientific or institutional significance; fragility; or age. Collection strengths include natural history in the fields of zoology, geology and palaeontology, scientific expedition reports, society and institutional journal titles, Indigenous cultures of Australia and the Pacific, Australian history, technology, colonial and other exhibition catalogues, museum studies, and Museums Victoria publications.
Many items from the Museums Victoria Library have been digitised for the Biodiversity Heritage Library as Museums Victoria is the home to the Australian node of this project. The digitisation operation is hosted by Museums Victoria and is nationally funded by the Atlas of Living Australia.
About OCLC
OCLC is a nonprofit global library organization that provides shared technology services, original research and community programs so that libraries can better fuel learning, research and innovation. Through OCLC, member libraries cooperatively produce and maintain WorldCat, the most comprehensive global network of data about library collections and services. Libraries gain efficiencies through OCLC's WorldShare, a complete set of library management applications and services built on an open, cloud-based platform. It is through collaboration and sharing of the world's collected knowledge that libraries can help people find answers they need to solve problems. Together as OCLC, member libraries, staff and partners make breakthroughs possible.
OCLC, WorldCat, WorldCat.org and WorldShare are trademarks and/or service marks of OCLC, Inc. Third-party product, service and business names are trademarks and/or service marks of their respective owners.
Contact
-
Bob Murphy
Manager, Media Relations
O: +1-614-761-5136
