Canadian Library Association Concerns About Outsourcing of AMICUS National Catalogue to OCLC

This is a follow-up to the Library Boy post of September 9, 2014 entitled Roundup on Proposed Outsourcing of AMICUS National Catalogue to OCLC.

Library and Archives Canada (LAC)  has been negotiating with the OCLC international library cooperative about taking over AMICUS, Canada's national union catalogue. My place of work uses AMICUS to identify institutions from which to order materials via inter-library loan.

The technology that runs AMICUS is decades-old and is no longer seen to meet the needs of the Canadian library community.


LAC has been holding roundtables with stakeholders about the issue and the Canadian Library Association's Technical Services Network submitted a series of questions to LAC in the wake of such a meeting on March 2, 2015.

The questions cover access to the new AMICUS for libraries that are not members of OCLC, the openness of OCLC, accessibility issues for libraries using older technologies, the maintenance of Canadian authorities and subject headings going forward, cross-references between English and French authorities and subject headings, etc.