Press release: 3rd August 2009
The Combined Regions (TCR) and Conarls, two organizations dedicated to interlibrary co-operation throughout the UK and Republic of Ireland, amalgamated with effect from 1 April 2009. United under The Combined Regions’ name, the organization will provide a single, united voice for libraries throughout the British Isles on matters of resource discovery and sharing, thereby achieving economies of scale whilst retaining services.
For more than 15 years TCR, working with its partners, has taken a lead role in the move towards a national network for resource sharing for the UK and is responsible for the UnityUK™ national union catalogue. At the same time, Conarls has provided strategic and operational support for library resource discovery and sharing in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Its notable achievements include the Conarls Inter-Regional Unit (IRU) Cost Scheme – which currently has 457 members – the Joint Fiction Reserves and a database of non-English language fiction collections. The Conarls Working Group within TCR will continue to deal with such issues and, with improved resources, expand on that work.
According to company secretary Alex Ball, ‘While the merger will bring efficiency savings to both organizations internally, both TCR and the Conarls Working Group within it will continue to support libraries in much the same way as they have always done. The merger also resolves any confusion libraries may have felt about the best forum in which to raise issues of inter-library co-operation.’
Further information about TCR and the Conarls Working Group may be found on the recently relaunched TCR website: http://combinedregions.com/.
The Combined Regions (TCR) is a company limited by guarantee, whose members are regional library organizations and national libraries. It was formed in 1994 with the mission to produce a national electronic union catalogue, Unity. The catalogue has undergone several transformations, and reached the milestone of full UK coverage when it merged with LinkUK in 2006 to become UnityUK™, developed and operated by OCLC. UnityUK™ has over 150 subscribers, and contains over 9.5 million records and over 50 million holdings.
Conarls was originally set up as forum for collaboration between the National and Regional Library Systems in the UK and the Republic of Ireland. As the landscape of regional library organizations has changed, so has the membership of Conarls, but the organization's commitment to interlibrary co-operation, resource discovery and sharing remains constant. Conarls is probably best known for its Inter-Regional Unit (IRU) Cost Scheme for interlibrary loans (ILLs). Instead of libraries charging each other the rate charged by the British Library Document Supply Centre for ILLs, libraries in the scheme charge each other the lower ‘Conarls rate’, thereby reducing costs. Conarls also played a part in setting up Joint Fiction Reserves: co-operative schemes whereby groups of libraries commit to maintain between them a comprehensive stock of out-of-print fiction, ensuring it remains available for anyone to borrow.
UnityUK is a trademark of The Combined Regions.
Press release: 22nd July 2008
Lancashire County Library and Information Service which runs one of the busiest public library ILL units in England, has moved its lending and borrowing operations over to UnityUK. In 2007/08, Lancashire made over 13,000 requests and supplied over 7000 items.
Lancashire has been using UnityUK to find locations since April 2006 and their catalogue, including holdings information, is now live within the service. Early in 2008, they introduced UnityUK’s lending service into the authority and in July 2008 they moved over their requesting functions to the Unity UK service.
Peggy Eccles, Principal Librarian Bibliographical Services with Lancashire County Library and Information Service explains why, after many years with the same supplier, they chose to move, “The UnityUK service is a modern and intelligent service that we knew would help us to upgrade our processes and ultimately improve the service we provide to other libraries and our customers. We have built a good reputation as a supplier to other public libraries and we believed it was important for us to join the thriving UnityUK user community.”
With UnityUK in place, Lancashire has streamlined and fully automated both its lending and requesting functions; with no need to maintain separate files or handle hundreds of incoming email messages. UnityUK’s built in rota building facility ensures that Lancashire can easily build long rotas where necessary and the system automatically tracks the progress of every request without the need for human intervention at any stage. This has enabled Lancashire to improve the efficiency of their service, reducing processing times for both requests and item supply.
UnityUK integrates closely with Lancashire’s library management system (LMS) to reduce the need for duplicating data entry in multiple systems. Request details are automatically transferred from UnityUK into their LMS, and an automated process creates a catalogue record that is used for issuing the items to borrowers. This high level of integration lowers the administrative overhead and reduces the opportunity for mistakes during data entry.
Peggy continues, “It was vital that our transition to UnityUK went smoothly, so OCLC put together a package for us that included workflow consultancy and process improvement prior to our move. This gave us the opportunity to refine our processes and then tailor the service to meet our needs.”
Press release: 30th Jun 2008
UnityUK is pleased to welcome back three subscribers to the UnityUK service. Middlesborough, Redcar and Cleveland and South Tyneside Public Libraries have all returned to UnityUK from an alternative resource sharing solution.
Julia Robinson, Support Services Librarian, Central Library, South Tyneside, explains the reasons for their return to the service.
"OCLC offered us a 6 week trial of UnityUK. 4 weeks into the trial we decided to subscribe because UnityUK had improved so much in the 2 years following our initial subscription. Our interloans staff are really impressed with the speed and content of the site, the speed of response from other users and the online help. We would be happy to recommend UnityUK to anyone in the Interloans Community."
The full integration of the LinkUK union catalogue data and holdings into UnityUK sees the realisation of a single UK national union catalogue. UnityUK is providing 170 UK public libraries access to over 9,300,000 titles and 50,500,000 holdings and to date has fulfilled over 112,000 requests from member libraries.
Press release: 18th June 2008
OCLC is pleased to announce that the data and holdings of the LinkUK union catalogue have been successfully migrated into the UnityUK union catalogue. This full integration sees the realisation of a UK national union catalogue that provides 170 public libraries access to over 9.3 million titles and 50.5 million holdings.
UnityUK delivers leading edge functionality for union catalogue management, cross database searching, holdings and item location, integrated interlibrary loans and resource sharing. It enables complete searching and request management from one interface and to date has fulfilled over 112,000 requests from member libraries.
Katie Birch, Portfolio Manager, OCLC commented "We are delighted to have reached this point and will continue to develop the service to suit the needs of its users."
Rob Froud, TCR Chair, commented "This is a landmark development in Interlibrary loan services in the UK. The Combined Regions is delighted to be working with OCLC and the former LinkUK library community to establish this coherent, strategic and national approach to service delivery."
The UnityUK user community continues to grow with Middlesborough, Redcar and Cleveland and South Tyneside Public Libraries recently subscribing to the service.
Press release: 12th October 2006
OCLC PICA and The Combined Regions (TCR) are pleased to announce that the process to integrate the UnityUK service with the LinkUK service has successfully begun.
The groundwork for the project to bring together over 100 UnityUK libraries and 78 LinkUK libraries is well under way. Five libraries across the West Midlands: Staffordshire, Coventry, Stoke-on-Trent, Birmingham and Worcestershire began using the UnityUK service in August 2006. The first early adopter library authorities from across London and the South East: Camden, Slough, Bromley, Southwark, Enfield, East Sussex, Islington and Surrey, have already received their first round of training and are in the process of beginning to use UnityUK to supply items requested by other libraries.
LinkUK, formerly known as v3 Online, will be integrated with UnityUK to deliver the first national service for resource sharing in the UK. This countrywide initiative is part-financed by the European Union’s European Regional Development Fund delivered through the South Yorkshire Objective 1 Programme.
Jennifer Cox, Stock Services Manager at Bromley Libraries, a previous Chair of the Forum for Interlending and a member of the OCLC Resource Sharing Advisory Committee, is already positive about the move to an integrated service, "All of us at Bromley can see the potential that the new service will offer, particularly its capability to streamline and speed up the ILL process for all members. This will make the job easier for staff and will ultimately improve the service we can offer to our library users. A national ILL service is the way forward we are excited about being part of its development."
LinkUK libraries will use both the UnityUK system and the integrated ILL management package, which enables them to use UnityUK to manage communication for all incoming requests and outgoing requests.
Early adopters among the LinkUK libraries will use both services as part of the integration project. This will facilitate gap analysis to identity the best of breed from both services and to ensure that the UnityUK service is developed in line with the LinkUK libraries usability requirements for the interface and workflow.
Library Authorities from Wales have a training date booked for October 2006, and following training, UnityUK will be rolled out to these areas for item supply management.
Linda Saunders, Chief Librarian at Sandwell and Dudley, was pleased to become an involved at an early stage, "The integration of the two services is a huge step forward for resource sharing and I welcome the opportunity to be a part of its evolution. The new service is completely in line with the underlying values of libraries; co-operation for the benefit of our users has always driven us to find new solutions to share our resources more effectively."
The integration process started, on schedule, in August 2006 and with the process now underway, UnityUK is on track to deliver a national network for resource sharing for the UK during 2007.
The new integrated service uses the latest resource sharing technology from world leaders OCLC PICA who also host and manage the new service. Over 175 library authorities across the UK use OCLC PICA software to share resources and manage requesting.
UnityUK will be on show at the OCLC PICA stand (stand 214) at the Online Information Show taking place at London Olympia from 28th to 30th November 2006.
In excess of 100 library authorities have already signed up to become members of UnityUK: the next generation resource sharing and interlibrary loan service from The Combined Regions (TCR). UnityUK is a part-financed project by the European Union’s European Regional Development Fund delivered through the South Yorkshire Objective 1 Programme. In the four months since the launch, 90% of members have been trained, and four regional user groups have been scheduled. More than 50% of subscribers have already used the service to place a request.
County Councils, Metropolitan Boroughs and Unitary authorities are all represented among the UnityUK membership list and library authorities large and small have all signed up for the new TCR service. The geographic spread of UnityUK users is impressive and the service is already being used by libraries across England, Scotland and Wales.
As part of the ongoing development of the service, from mid July 2006 UnityUK subscribers will be able to access the former UnityWeb catalogue, complete with 40 million holdings, and use the information for searching and placing requests.
UnityUK will, for the first time, deliver a national network for resource sharing for the UK as it brings together the union catalogues of The Combined Regions and LinkUK and one integrated service is expected in mid 2007. The new service uses the latest resource sharing technology from world leaders OCLC PICA who also host and manage the new service.
The 78 LinkUK libraries also use OCLC PICA software to share resources and the integration project between UnityUK and the LinkUK libraries is due to start during the summer 2006. Early adopters among the LinkUK libraries will use both services as part the integration project to ensure that the UnityUK service is developed in line with the LinkUK libraries requirements.
More than 175 library authorities across the UK use OCLC PICA software to share resources and manage requesting.
UnityUK will be on show at the Forum for Interlending, taking place at the University of Southampton from 10th to 12th July 2006.
Press release: 13th April 2006
UnityUK, the next generation resource sharing and interlibrary loan service from The Combined Regions (TCR), has signed nine new sales among libraries in Scotland. Scottish public library authorities who have signed up for UnityUK include Falkirk, Perth and Kinross, Renfrewshire, Angus, Dumfries and Galloway, West Lothian and South Lanarkshire. They are joined by Edinburgh Telford College and the National Library of Scotland.
In order to meet the demand for the new service in Scotland, one training course has already taken place at the National Library of Scotland with another taking place in Falkirk on the 19th April. Training is provided as part of the UnityUK subscription and there are still a few places available for the Falkirk training day. You can book online through the TCR website.
Already more than 25% of the TCR library authority partners around the UK have signed up for the UnityUK service. The first three library authorities went live with UnityUK on the 3rd April, just six weeks after the announcement of the launch of the news service. 8 more sites have undergone training so far during April, in preparation for their migration to the new service.
UnityUK is the latest generation of the established Unity service. UnityUK will, for the first time, deliver a national network for resource sharing for the UK as it brings together the union catalogues of The Combined Regions and LinkUK. The new service uses the latest resource sharing technology from world leaders OCLC PICA (incorporating FDI) who also host and manage the new service.
Press release: 6th April 2006
UnityUK, the next generation resource sharing and interlibrary loan service from The Combined Regions (TCR), has gone live in the first three library authorities to move onto the new system. This represents the first phase of libraries to migrate to UnityUK and comes just six weeks after the announcement of the launch of the new service.
Derbyshire, Lincolnshire and Oxfordshire have moved over to UnityUK and are now using the service to search multiple library authority catalogues, to identify the location of resources they want and to manage interlibrary loan and resource sharing services for their customers.
Already a significant number of TCR library authority partners have signed up for UnityUK. These authorities will receive training and then be migrated to the new system in a series of phases over the coming months.
The three authorities going live in phase one will be using the first release of UnityUK. This release incorporates some 2.5 million holdings records from seven library authorities loaded against the bibliographic records within the LinkUK database. Holdings information from more libraries authorities will be incorporated into UnityUK during April, in readiness for the existing UnityWeb data load which is due to start in May 2006.
Martin Molloy, OBE, strategic director, cultural and community services, Derbyshire County Council, comments, "For many years Derbyshire County Council has used the Unity service for locating resources from outside our own stock. As a long standing user, we were very excited about the new features that UnityUK will bring to our staff and users. New features such as the improved integration with our library management system, access to a wider collection of catalogues and improved real time holdings details will enable us to provide a more efficient service to our users. It is also rewarding to know that we will be one of the first participants in the first national network for resource sharing."
A programme of training days, for new subscribers to the service, has been announced. Events are taking place around the UK and a full list of the dates and venues can be found on the new website for The Combined Regions, www.thecombinedregions.com. Training is provided as part of the UnityUK subscription and it is easy to book using the online registration service.
Press release: 21st March 2006
The Combined Regions (TCR) has announced that UnityUK will be the name for its next generation resource sharing and interlibrary loan service. UnityUK is the latest generation of the established Unity service. UnityUK will, for the first time, deliver a national network for resource sharing for the UK as it brings together the union catalogues of TCR and LinkUK. The new service uses the latest resource sharing technology from world leaders OCLC PICA (incorporating FDI) who also host and manage the new service.
Rob Froud, county librarian, Somerset, and chair of TCR announced the UnityUK name at the Forum for Interlending day held at BLDSC on 17th March 2006, where he gave a presentation on the future of union catalogues.
At the BLDSC Rob commented, "We chose the name UnityUK as it builds on the established tradition of the Unity service and incorporates the exciting prospect of delivering national coverage through a single service. The TCR Board is delighted with the progress that the new service has made in just one month since it was announced. Our partner libraries are very excited about the functions that the new service will offer and the ease of use of the new interface."
Early adopter partners will take delivery of the service, on schedule, from the 1st April 2006, following a series of training sessions at the end of March. The full service is due to be available from mid May and the project is on target to deliver on time.
More than 300 librarians have already registered to see a demonstration of the new service at the series of UnityUK roadshows taking place around the UK during March and April. A full list of UnityUK events can be found on the new website for TCR, http://combinedregions.com. Places are free and it is easy to book using the online registration service.
UnityUK will be on show at the Library and Information Show on the 26th and 27th April 2006, at the Pavilion, NEC, Birmingham. Visit stand 407 to see UnityUK in action.
Press release: 15th February 2006
The Combined Region’s resource sharing and interlibrary loan service, UnityWeb, has entrusted the next phase of its development to OCLC PICA, incorporating Fretwell-Downing Informatics (FDI). FDI was acquired by OCLC PICA in 2005.
The new generation of UnityWeb brings the separate union catalogues of The Combined Regions and LinkUK into one service. The new Unity service will be hosted and managed by OCLC PICA and FDI, world-leaders in resource sharing.
Rob Froud, county librarian, Somerset, and chair of The Combined Regions, says, "Working in partnership with OCLC PICA to take the Unity service forward offers exciting possibilities for resource sharing and inter-lending in the UK public library sector. It provides us with a unique opportunity to join-up previously distinct union catalogues into a single national resource. Combine this with improved functionality and service and we believe that we have a winning formula."
The new UnityWeb service will now offer a range of new functionality including Z39.50 compliance, real-time status of availability of books and access to 5 million bibliographic records on LinkUK. Libraries can also take advantage of the full interlibrary loans messaging option. This peer-to-peer and global system offers complete searching and request management in one single interface. The new service can also be integrated with local systems using standard protocols.
CBS from OCLC PICA is the replacement software for the Unity union catalogue. It can load a minimum of 10,000 records per hour with full duplicate detection and can export at 80 records per second. It supports Unicode and input/editing of all non-roman scripts, and has excellent support for duplicate record detection and resolution.
"We are delighted that the first success of the new venture between OCLC PICA and FDI happens to be one in FDI’s home market," adds Rein van Charldorp, managing director of OCLC PICA. "Winning this tender shows what can be achieved if two strong partners work together. We can offer a unique solution by combining our expertise and product offerings."
Robin Murray, managing director of FDI, adds, “We can offer a hybrid approach offering both physical union catalogues and stand alone library catalogues through one interface, combine this with ISO ILL for request management – and this offers libraries the next generation in resource sharing solutions."
FDI and OCLC PICA solutions have already demonstrated their reliability and stability working separately, and together. The new generation of the new Unity service consists of systems that already work together successfully and are estimated to be in use in some 20,000 libraries around the world.
A new website has been launched to support the new service, and is available at http://combinedregions.com or contact tcr@fdisolutions.com for more information.
A nationwide roadshow of events will run between 13 March and 7 April. Dates will be announced w/c 20th February and will be posted to http://combinedregions.com.
