The RERO network will be split into two groups of libraries by 2020-2021, one integrating the Swiss Library Services Platform (SLSP) and the other adopting the rero ils solution. In order to avoid a situation leading to the creation of two divergent copies of its current French-language authority file, RERO decided to discontinue this file in favour of a solution that is more widely recognized and firmly rooted in a wider community, and that can be equally used by both SLSP and rero ils.

RERO launches a first phase of tests on rero ils in this month of March.

After having tested its software with the Swiss professional community during a first cycle of workshops, the central was able to collect a good number of feedbacks on the use and usability of the system. RERO now wishes to continue this improvement process in a formal way, by opening a test phase with some pilot libraries.

13 workshops, 11 towns, 8 cantons… and only one country of course. This completes the cycle of introductory workshops to rero ils started at the end of November 2019 and carried out in both German- and French-speaking Switzerland. The RERO central office draws a generally positive balance of this action.

Work, expression, manifestation, item, one, two, three, four,… a heady nursery rhyme that people working in libraries are now familiar with. Indeed, these four concepts are regularly chanted in specialised conferences and in library science classes. More broadly, they reflect an evolution of bibliographic models (LRM), cataloguing rules (RDA) and data exchange formats (Bibframe). Our French neighbours usually call this movement the “bibliographic transition”. And the rero ils project does not escape it, quite the contrary: it is fully imbued with it. The use of Bibliostratus shows this.

The rest of the article is available on French or German.