“It is an enormous honour to have been elected to represent South Africa and Africa on the Global Council of the OCLC. It also means that UP Library – that is already regarded as a leader on the continent – get the international profile it deserves,” Mr Moropa, Director of Library Services at the University said.

Founded in 1967, OCLC is a nonprofit, membership, computer library service and research organization dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the world’s information and reducing information costs. More than 72 000 libraries in 170 countries and territories around the world have used OCLC services for cataloguing, reference, resource sharing, eContent, preservation, library management and Web services. The OCLC and its worldwide member libraries cooperatively produce and maintain WorldCat, the world’s largest and richest database of bibliographic information. The OCLC also publishes the Dewey Decimal Classification system, the most widely used library classification system in the world. OCLC is headquartered in Dublin, Ohio, USA and has over 1200 employees and over 25 900 member libraries worldwide.

Mr Moropa’s election to EMEA paved the way for his subsequent election as one of the 48 members of the OCLC’s Global Council. Apart from having the official governing function of electing trustees to the OCLC Board, Global Council delegates also provide input as OCLC plans strategy and operations, bringing the questions and ideas of the membership to the cooperative’s leaders and staff.

For more information as well as a detailed history of the OCLC, please visit http://www.oclc.org/.