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Sabinet poised to hone research in Africa

By Sabinet Online
Centurion, Pretoria, 18 Feb 2016

With the depreciation of the rand, SA's regulatory pressures and the overall current fiscal climate, corporates are constantly looking at cost saving, workflow efficiencies and the ability to deliver innovative solutions to their stakeholders.

With research and academic libraries being mostly affected by this grave economic landscape, Sabinet is proud to collaborate with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) for a complete turnkey solution.

As a knowledge organisation, the CSIR not only acquires and develops knowledge, it also actively disseminates such to a broad external market. Its multidisciplinary research and technological innovation aims to contribute to South Africa's industrial development and the overall quality of lives of South Africans.

Successively, the CSIR Information Services (CSIRIS) plays an important role in enabling CSIR researchers to conduct world-class, innovative research through the provision of specialised information services that include seamless access to both electronic and print resources.

Being the sole distributor in Sub-Saharan Africa of OCLC products and services, Sabinet's implementation of OCLC's WorldShare Management Services (WMS) easily manages these electronic, digital and print material through a cloud-based library system. Where traditional integrated library systems often require costs to maintain servers and software these costs are eliminated with WMS.

WMS has the WorldCat database as its foundation. This co-operatively created database containing millions of items in all formats allows libraries to benefit from other libraries' efforts and to discover and share resources internationally. WMS further facilitates the sharing of data such as vendor records, publisher and knowledge base data, serials patterns and more, through a shared platform.

Simply put, with WMS:

* all resources - both print and electronic - are managed through one interface, helping to streamline workflows, eliminating the need to flick backward and forward between various screens and interfaces;
* you are sharing content amongst multiple libraries, helping to save money on electronic resources;
* WorldCat Discovery Services means that users can search a large pool of data from the library and all of those on the WorldCat database too, using a single-search function; and
* You experience improved workflows and drastic reduction in the time it takes to perform routine tasks, including e-resources management and cataloguing. This enables the reallocation of staff elsewhere to concentrate on new initiatives and focusing more resources on innovation.

The generation and application of knowledge resides at the core of the CSIR and Sabinet's role in enhancing the facilitation of access to information will undeniably contribute to creating a better future.

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Sabinet

With a sound performance history of over 30 years, Sabinet has firmly established itself as a leader in facilitating access to a wide spectrum of high-quality and credible information sources. Over the course of the last three decades, Sabinet has built a strong local and international reputation for providing Africa's information to the world and the world's information to Africa.

Sabinet's mission to support libraries' technical processes, promote resource sharing and enable access to information sources is underpinned by its commitment, partnerships, understanding and support.

Sabinet's roots are in library support services, where it is recognised for providing central platforms for collaboration and resource sharing among libraries.

Editorial contacts

Jeanine Liebenberg
Sabinet Online
(+27) 12 643 9500
Jeanine@sabinet.co.za