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The Bavarian Library Network (BVB) and the Cooperative Library Network of Berlin-Brandenburg (KOBV) look back on ten years of partnership between their institutions. At the end of December 2007, the partners founded their strategic alliance with the objective of expanding the service scope in their respective associations and making use of synergy effects.

The strategic alliance is accordingly based on both pillars of a service partnership and a development partnership. The common union catalogue "B3Kat" operated by the BVB is at the center of the service partnership. Within the framework of the alliance, a total of 27 libraries and around 4.3 million new title entries could be added. Together, the BVB and the KOBV libraries have expanded the B3Kat to over 27.6 million title entries in the meantime. Among the further components of the service partnership, there are the hosting of SISIS local systems by the BVB and the operation of OPUS university publication servers by the KOBV.

Within the framework of the development partnership, so far seven projects have been concluded successfully with the two software engineering positions located at the Zuse Institute in Berlin. By way of example, the improvement of the data exchange with literature management programmes, the development of tools for data and error analysis in library catalogues and the expansion of the author management in OPUS should be mentioned in this regard.

Further projects are scheduled, in particular for supporting the libraries in the areas of Open Access Transformation and Open Science.

Bavarian Library Network (BVB)

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