DUBLIN, Ohio, 31 July 2023—Comfenalco Antioquia Libraries, in Medellin, Colombia, has selected OCLC's WorldShare Management Services (WMS) as its new library services platform. Comfenalco Antioquia will be the first library in Colombia to implement WMS, scheduled to be live with the new platform later this year.

Comfenalco Antioquia is a Family Compensation (Social) Fund that provides social programs and services in areas of housing, education, culture, libraries, recreation, sport, and tourism. The library comprises 13 physical facilities, including public and school libraries and reading rooms together with four technical areas: Reading Promotion, Library Content, Collection Development, and Local Information Service. The libraries reach more than 3 million users per year, with programs, services and more than 160,000 physical and digital resources.

Comfenalco Antioquia Library is moving to WMS from OCLC's OLIB, the library management system they have used for more than 25 years.

Comfenalco Antioquia Libraries staff said they selected WMS for the security, stability, and innovation that the platform offers, and for the cloud-based applications and services they say provide the desired levels of service and quality. Sharing resources, data, and work makes the libraries more efficient and enables them to offer users higher value services with physical and electronic resources integrated from a single interface.

WorldShare Management Services is a cloud-based library services platform with WorldCat as its foundation, which allows library staff to draw on OCLC's shared data network and technology for more efficient workflows. WMS also 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 look forward to working closely with Comfenalco Antioquia staff—along with Nova Informática staff, our partner in Colombia—to implement WMS as their new library services platform," said Eric van Lubeek, OCLC Vice President, Global Library Services. "We welcome Comfenalco Antioquia to the WorldShare community. We're confident that this new platform will exceed the expectations of library staff and users."

Visitors to the COBAES 2023 conference, 2-4 August 2023, in Medellin, Colombia, can learn more about WMS and other library services at the OCLC booth.