NBK a 'game-changer' for UK librarians

A new National Bibliographic Knowledgebase (NBK) that brings together bibliographic data from every UK academic and specialist library has been hailed as a key piece of national data infrastructure for the UK.

Created by Jisc and project partner, OCLC, and soft-launched in February, the NBK has been described a potential game-changer for librarians trying to meet today’s collection management challenges. The NBK also promises to transform resource discovery for students and researchers by providing a single point of reference for books and journals across the nation’s libraries.

Two pilot services, Library Hub Discover and Cataloguing are available now. With Cataloguing, NBK organisations can download and use MARC records for their library catalogue. Discovery is open to everybody worldwide, and is free at the point of use. The Discover interface will provide a single point of reference for UK resources – encompassing monographs (previously covered by Copac) and journals (replacing SUNCAT, Jisc’s journal search tool).

David Prosser, executive director at Research Libraries UK, says the NBK opens up huge opportunities for libraries: ‘Helping researchers and students navigate the digital environment is a key role,’ he says. ‘We see that with the growing number of university presses that are being launched or revived, with the support of the library. To help libraries make the right decisions and set the right priorities, we need large volumes of good data, and that’s what the NBK provides.’

Read a full article on the NBK, and its implications for the UK library community, here.