Rein van Charldorp, OCLC Vice-President
und Geschäftsführer von OCLC EMEA
Rein van Charldorp kam im Jahr 2002 als Geschäftsführer zu OCLC PICA (jetzt OCLC EMEA). Zuvor verbrachte er 20 Jahre bei Reed Elsevier, wo er in den Bereichen Science und Business Publishing tätig war, zuletzt als Geschäftsführer (COO) von Reed Business Information in den Niederlanden. Rein van Charldorp wurde als niederländischer Staatsbürger in Indonesien geboren. Er verfügt über einen Master of Science in Chemie sowie einen Doctorate in Science der Universität Leiden. Seinen MBA-Abschluss erhielt er von der Nijenrode University in den Niederlanden bzw. der Wharton Business School (University of Pennsylvania) in den USA.

Beim Bibliothekartag in Mannheim präsentiert sich die neue OCLC zum ersten Mal dem bibliothekarischen Fachpublikum und bietet ein interessantes und umfangreiches Programm. B.I.T.online-Redakteurin Angelika Beyreuther sprach im April mit Rein van Charldorp, Vizepräsident von OCLC EMEA (Europa, Nahost, Afrika), über neue Produkte, Firmenstrategie und Zukunftsvisionen.

Will your company present new products and highlights - probably even brand new software developments? - at the upcoming German Library Congress in Mannheim beginning of June? We are curious and want to know, why our readers should plan in time to visit OCLC's booth at the Mannheim exhibition?

Rein van Charldorp: Yes, in fact the German Library Congress is very important for us this year, as we will be showing our enhanced end user discovery service. The service will be based on InfoGuide, and available to libraries running LBS and SISIS-SunRise management systems. It provides them with a highly configurable solution that gives end users an easy access to their information resources combined with a full range of personalization and services options.

We are also going to be talking at the show about the WorldCat vision and strategy. Union Catalogue Partners like GBV, HeBis or BSZ understand that by loading their records into WorldCat and having their libraries holdings exposed in WorldCat.org, they can firstly play their part in creating a network effect for libraries which raises awareness of libraries as a whole in the minds of web users. And secondly, they are driving visits to their individual library sites from WorldCat.org through the deep-linking functionality that WorldCat.org enables.

In addition, linking of social network services from the WorldCat.org site to our locally installed end user service delivers enormous added-value to these individual library sites and makes them even more attractive for their patrons.

And last but not least: At this year's Bibliothekartag in Mannheim it will be our first major appearance as the new OCLC in the German market. It is definitely worth the trouble coming to Mannheim and paying us a visit at our stand - there will be many things to see.

What's your company's point of main effort in the very near future? Do you see specific problems you have to cope with? And unique chances you want to exploit?

Rein van Charldorp: OCLC will continue to roll out products and services that optimize the workflow in libraries, especially around the way data is managed. To do that, we must continue to unite libraries around common activities.

We're therefore investigating new ways of how we can support and improve business processes in libraries by making use of new technologies in combination with our ability to aggregate data that supports these processes.

Our distinct advantage in this regard is that we can combine our knowledge as a global service provider with our expertise in regional markets across the world. In Europe alone we have offices in Germany, Netherlands, UK, France and Switzerland, which means that as well as being able to leverage the economies of scale that go with being a global organisation, we understand and can cater for the differing requirements of various markets.

I do not speak just for myself (at least I hope so) but also for our readers asking you the following: There is a little confusion about the European part of your business: first SISIS, then OCLC PICA, now OCLC. What is the essence we in the library world should understand and know about those changes? Can you give us a short outline?

Rein van Charldorp: Of course, the fact that we have changed names recently might be confusing for some of your readers but apart from this not that much has changed for the German market. In spite of three different names in a short period of time we still work with the same staff, develop new products, and serve our customers with the same commitment in Germany. I should add that in the future with OCLC we can offer even better service and products for the German market because we can keep on working independently with the strong support of a global organization.

Furthermore, I think that in the IT industry in general, economies of scale are very significant so everyone is looking for growth. There isn't much organic growth in the library systems market at the moment, and so acquisitions and mergers are an inevitable outcome. Having said that it is important during any period of growth through acquisition that an organization takes a look at the way these changes are perceived by the market. You are right to say that the German arm of our organization has operated under three different corporate identities in the last five years, and not surprisingly that has created a need for clarity. We believe that the major rebranding effort that took place in 2007, to bring all parts of the organization under the name OCLC makes an enormous amount of sense from the library market's perspective. It provides us with a single, consistent, global identity that matches our aspiration to deliver networked services, that connect libraries and furthers their interests in sharing the world's knowledge.

You are a profit oriented private entity in the software development business, but librarians can join the company as members, can even be in OCLC's board and thus are able to influence the companies orientation. What are the advantages for libraries in doing so? And what is the benefit for OCLC?

Rein van Charldorp: You are right to say that we have a unique organisational structure which means that libraries can become members of the world's largest library cooperative. And being a part of a cooperative means that the benefits generated accrue back to each member library.

The most obvious advantage to libraries in playing a role is that through participation libraries can reduce costs and eliminate redundancies in workflow. Our history is based on cooperation in the area of cataloguing and this endeavour has resulted in the world's largest database of bibliographic and holdings data, WorldCat. Residing as we now do in the world of the web and taking on board that model of participation, we see huge value for libraries to be gained from making data and services available at a "network-level".

We are also in a position to represent libraries in a way that no other organisation can do, through our role as a research body. We have an Office of Programs and Research that is working with the community to collaboratively identify problems and to prototype and test solutions. We also publish timely and insightful reports to the membership. Our latest, "Sharing, Privacy and Trust in Our Networked World" looks at how social networking is impacting on the library space, and includes market research carried out in Germany amongst other places.

And, as we increasingly become a more globally focused organization in our outlook, there will be more reflections of this in the activities of OCLC, and more representation from our membership outside the US.

In the long run, what is OCLC's strategic orientation for the next years to come?

Rein van Charldorp: Our orientation is about ensuring the ongoing success of libraries in the world of the web which means weaving libraries into the psyche of web users. Our mission is to connect people to knowledge through library cooperation, and this increasingly means using more effectively the mechanism the web provides.

The key thing, if libraries are not to be bypassed by changing consumer habits, is therefore "to get webscale" - a term we have for global reach in the web environment. The problem is that today libraries have a massively disaggregated, small-scale presence. The challenge will be therefore to get them somewhere near the centre of web flow where they will get sufficient traffic to pass it on to the local service.

A step towards this has been the work ongoing in WorldCat.org since its launch in 2006. WorldCat.org is our hosted end user service to consumers wanting to discover and locate items, wherever they might reside in one of the world's libraries. WorldCat.org is currently receiving about 100.000 visits from German users every month. It has recently incorporated a number of social networking features including personalized lists which can be shared, to encourage users to come back time and time again.

Talking about the future: What are your thoughts about the future of libraries? Will they continue to exist? What will be their fate in our society confronted by the world wide web, web 2.0, ebooks, big digitization projects and bookless libraries to come in some years in Stanford and other locations? Can you define the role of the librarian in the information epoch, characterized by changes of such rapid speed nobody of us would have imagined a couple of years ago?

Rein van Charldorp: There has been much talk about the future of libraries of late, and OCLC applauds efforts by the domain to come to terms with its changing role in this challenging new environment. We are very optimistic about the future of libraries, as long as we are not reticent about how libraries need to evolve.

The perception of the public has been that libraries are collections of materials. This is true, of course, but it misses that point that those collections are developed, maintained, indexed, cataloged, referenced, distributed and promoted by librarians. While users predominantly see the tip of the iceberg, the content itself, the real value of the library is in the activities of librarians. The power of the Web is that it not only decreases the cost of publishing and distribution, but increases the value of participation. Librarians have been involved in a very social, very networked, very robust universe of ideas, activities, communities and materials for centuries. But it has been chiefly behind the scenes, often as transparent participants, at least as far as end-users are concerned.

The Web presents an opportunity for librarians and their library communities to take a more central, active and visible role in the information and knowledge spheres. The Internet is fueled by connections. Enabling librarians, users, partners and services to connect more often, in more ways, and in more places is a great goal for libraries and OCLC.