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OCLC PICA acquires Fretwell-Downing Informatics

OCLC PICA, the leading library systems and service provider in Europe, has acquired Fretwell-Downing Informatics, an information discovery, library management and knowledge delivery organization, to strengthen and extend their combined worldwide network for information delivery to libraries.

OCLC PICA, based in Leiden, the Netherlands, and Fretwell-Downing Informatics, based in Sheffield, United Kingdom, will continue to offer their current product lines while they work to develop new services that take full advantage of an expanded information delivery network.

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U.S. consumer spending for online content nearly $1 billion for first half of 2005

A new study by the Online Publishers Association says that U.S. consumer spending for online content grew to $987 million during the first six months of 2005, an increase of 15.7 percent over the same period last year. And, for the first time, quarterly sales topped the half a billion dollar mark in the second quarter. The breakdown for online consumer spending:

Entertainment/Lifestyles content, spurred by sales of music online, ranked first among all paid content categories, reaching $264.8 million.
Personals/Dating remained a strong second with online content sales of $245.2 million.
Business/Investment Content, which ranked first in revenue in 2001, second in 2002 and 2003, and dropped to third place in 2004, remained there for the first half of 2005.
Of the 11 categories tracked for the report, the top three—Entertainment/Lifestyles, Personals/Dating and Business/Investment—accounted for just over two-thirds of online content spending for the first half of 2005, up slightly from 67.3 percent for the full year 2004.

In addition, the single-purchase share of paid-content sales took another big leap, reaching 20.1 percent of total sales, up from 11 percent in 2003. And the number of U.S. consumers paying for online content continues to grow. Out of a total U.S. online population of 171.0 million in the second quarter of 2005, 19.4 million paid for online content, up 15.6 percent from the 16.8 million who paid for content online in the second quarter of 2004.

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IMLS makes award to OCLC, Getty Trust

The Institute of Museum and Library Services has made a $399,197 award to OCLC in conjunction with the J. Paul Getty Trust to plan and co-host the 2006 and 2007 Web-Wise Conferences on Libraries and Museums in the Digital World.

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OCLC welcomes these new member libraries

Lakes Community High School District 117
Location: Lake Villa, Illinois, USA
OCLC Symbol: LCHSD
OCLC Network: ILLINET

Special Education Service Agency Library
Location: Anchorage, Alaska, USA
OCLC Symbol: AKSEA
OCLC Network: OCLC Western Service Center

Membership guidelines and protocols

WorldCat update

WorldCat is the world’s most comprehensive bibliographic database. Updated at a rate of nearly one new record every 10 seconds, WorldCat contains more than 62 million bibliographic records and 1 billion holdings contributed by more than 8,900 libraries around the world. The Open WorldCat program makes the items in library collections—physical and digital, popular or special—discoverable by people searching the Internet.

See the latest WorldCat record

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