PICA and Developments in Library Networking in the Netherlands

Most of the 2,600 libraries in the Netherlands are now automated. Pica, founded as a centre of library automation and networking in 1969, provides services directly to about 500 libraries and indirectly to over 1,600. These comprise central services – a Shared Cataloguing Service, a Union Catalogue with interlibrary facilities, and access to centrally stored reference databases – and services concerned with the development and exploitation of local library systems; Pica has a programme to integrate the central and local systems into a single library network. It is also trying to establish online information services aimed at end users; these include RAPDOC, a system for the supply of journal articles in electronic form. Pica is also involved in the EC-sponsored EDILIBE (Electronic Data Interchange for Libraries and Booksellers in Europe) project, the E-doc project for the development of tools for cataloguing and accessing electronic documents, and the VISAGE project for storing and accessing electronic full colour pictures through local OPACs. Its future strategy assumes the need to expand into other countries, and a start has been made with the German-speaking parts of Europe.