Researchers and developers from global library cooperative Online Computer Library Center, Inc. (OCLC) and the information schools of Syracuse University and the University of Washington have announced their participation in a new international effort to explore the creation of a more credible web search experience based on inputs from librarians worldwide. Called the ‘Reference Extract,’ the planning phase of this project is funded through a $100,000 grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
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Published by rwatstein November 15th, 2008
in libraries and OCLC.
Global library cooperative Online Computer Library Center, Inc. (OCLC) has announced that the OCLC Members Council recently met in Dublin, Ohio, to discuss similarities and differences in libraries around the world, continue planning a transition to a Global Council and Regional Councils to extend OCLC participation, and elect a council delegate to the OCLC Board of Trustees. Under the direction of Members Council President Loretta Parham, Library Director and CEO, The Atlanta University Center, delegates also heard reports from OCLC senior management and staff, and discussed the worldwide library cooperative’s plans and activities.
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Published by rwatstein October 25th, 2008
in libraries and OCLC.
Subtitled “Collaboration Among Libraries, Archives and Museums,” the report highlights lessons learned from five library, archive and museum workshops held at RLG partner institutions in the U.S. and the U.K., and contains information about inspiring collaborative projects in campus environments. The bulk of the report, which is authored by Diane Zorich, Günter Waibel and Ricky Erway, is dedicated to the catalysts that allow collaboration to thrive.
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Published by rwatstein October 25th, 2008
in OCLC, classification and cataloging.
Global library cooperative Online Computer Library Center, Inc. (OCLC) and BibliothГЁque nationale de France have signed a letter of intent to work cooperatively to add records from the French national library to OCLC’s WorldCat. WorldCat is one of the world’s largest online resources for finding information in libraries.
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Published by rwatstein October 5th, 2008
in books, Google and OCLC.
Thanks to new Application Programming Interfaces (API) released by Google on September 22, WorldCat.org users now have an easy, seamless way to view digitized books available in the Google Book Search collection, right on the WorldCat.org Web site. A Google Preview Button will appear in the record display when the text of a work—either excerpts for in-copyright works or full text for public domain materials—is available online. Visitors can click on the button to access the content within WorldCat.org via an embedded Google viewport.“This is a great enhancement to the discovery process on WorldCat.org,” says Bill Carney, Content Manager, OCLC. “The Google Book Search APIs represent an important advance in accessing the content scanned on behalf of libraries participating in the Google Book Search Library Project. Working together enables us to increase the presence of these libraries and their collections on the Web.”
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Published by rwatstein September 27th, 2008
in tagging and OCLC.
You and your users can now keep track of your favorite items in WorldCat through tags—keywords that help you classify or describe an item. Tags are displayed in search results lists and may help you find similar items or organize items in a way that makes sense to you. You can add as many tags as you would like to an unlimited set of items. You can view and maintain all of your personalized tags from your WorldCat profile page. Plus, you can also browse items using the tags other people have contributed. To tag an item, you must log in to your WorldCat account or register to create an account. Tags are tied to individual WorldCat account profiles, and not the main WorldCat.org index—so these new tags will not interfere with “official” library cataloging of an item. Log in to WorldCat.org and start tagging!
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Published by rwatstein September 21st, 2008
in OCLC and iPhone.
Alice Sneary writes: “I don’t have an iPhone yet, but I just found (another) reason to want one: There is now a WorldCat app developed for it, available for download at the Apple apps section (for free). If you have an iPhone, download it and let us know how it performs for you. In fact, we might even send you a free WorldCat t-shirt in exchange.”
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Published by rwatstein September 7th, 2008
in OCLC.
The new report features achievements for the RLG Partnership and OCLC Programs and Research over the last year. During the year, the RLG Partnership benefited from the eager willingness of the library, archive and museum community to maximize its efforts and help increase the impact of its work. Hundreds of staff from partner and other institutions invested their time, effort, thought and expertise across a broad range of activities described in the RLG Programs Work Agenda. Those colleagues hosted RLG staff, responded to surveys, shared advice and gave strong direction at every opportunity.
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Published by rwatstein August 31st, 2008
in OCLC and copyright.
OCLC is piloting a new service for libraries that encourages librarians and other interested parties to discover and share information about the copyright status of books. The WorldCat Copyright Evidence Registry is a community working together to build a union catalog of copyright evidence based on WorldCat, which contains more than 100 million bibliographic records describing items held in thousands of libraries worldwide. In addition to the WorldCat metadata, the Copyright Evidence Registry uses other data contributed by libraries and other organizations.
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NetLibrary, OCLC’s platform for eContent and the leading provider of eBooks for the institutional library market, has announced agreements with 19 publishers that will add thousands of new eBooks and eAudiobooks to NetLibrary’s growing catalog of more than 170,000 titles.With increasing worldwide demand for electronic content, NetLibrary continues to enhance and expand its catalog by partnering with preeminent publishers of scholarly, trade, STM and reference content. New publisher partners adding eContent to NetLibrary include:
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Published by rwatstein July 5th, 2008
in OCLC and databases.
Global library cooperative Online Computer Library Center, Inc. (OCLC) is working with software development and consulting enterprise Index Data to extend the discovery capabilities of WorldCat Local to include all licensed and full-text resources of a library. Index Data will help OCLC incorporate metasearch into WorldCat Local for searching databases that are not indexed in WorldCat.org.
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Published by rwatstein June 29th, 2008
in digital, OCLC and archives.
This 14-page document is a user guide for collection administrators using OCLC’s Digital Archive. It provides instructions for using each of the Digital Archive features to manage your content. The three primary functions of the Digital Archive are covered in this Guide:Ingestion. The process of moving your content into the Archive. Reporting. Getting feedback from the system in order to manage your content. Dissemination. The process of getting copies of your content out of the Archive.
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Published by rwatstein June 29th, 2008
in libraries, library services and OCLC.
OCLC announced they are piloting a new end user discovery service in the Netherlands, OCLC TouchPoint. The service promises greater accuracy for researchers with more complex discovery needs and richer insights into chosen resources. User generated content, like reviews and lists, which have been contributed to WorldCat.org, are for the first time going to be made accessible via a locally hosted solution. TouchPoint will be piloted first with a library using the LBS system, the pilot will commence later this month. OCLC invited the University Library of the Erasmus University Rotterdam to collaborate in this pilot project. The Rotterdam University Library strives to excel in economics/management and related fields. It stands for client orientation, innovation and efficiency.
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Published by rwatstein May 26th, 2008
in digital, Google and OCLC.
OCLC and Google Inc. have signed an agreement to exchange data that will facilitate the discovery of library collections through Google search services.Under terms of the agreement, OCLC member libraries participating in the Google Book Searchв„ў program, which makes the full text of more than one million books searchable, may share their WorldCat-derived MARC records with Google to better facilitate discovery of library collections through Google. Google will link from Google Book Search to WorldCat.org, which will drive traffic to library OPACs and other library services. Google will share data and links to digitized books with OCLC, which will make it possible for OCLC to represent the digitized collections of OCLC member libraries in WorldCat.
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Published by rwatstein March 29th, 2008
in OCLC and cataloging.
When Frederick G. Kilgour founded OCLC in 1967, he saw libraries across the U.S. doing the same, repetitive tasks in cataloging—rooms full of typists entering the same information on catalog cards. The OCLC online union catalog (now called WorldCat) and shared cataloging system dramatically reduced these inefficiencies by making it unnecessary for more than one library to originally catalog an item. Records in the online union catalog could be shared and used by others to produce catalog cards. When Frederick G. Kilgour founded OCLC in 1967, he saw libraries across the U.S. doing the same, repetitive tasks in cataloging—rooms full of typists entering the same information on catalog cards. The OCLC online union catalog (now called WorldCat) and shared cataloging system dramatically reduced these inefficiencies by making it unnecessary for more than one library to originally catalog an item. Records in the online union catalog could be shared and used by others to produce catalog cards.
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Published by rwatstein March 29th, 2008
in libraries, library services and OCLC.
When Stacey Buick noticed a 60 percent increase in circulation and a doubling of Wi-Fi usage at the Malvern Public Library in Malvern, Iowa, she knew it was no accident. Rather, it was the direct result of participating in a Rural Library Sustainability workshop sponsored by WebJunction and the Iowa State Library—one of nearly 300 workshops delivered across the country over the past two years as part of WebJunction’s Rural Library Sustainability Project. OCLC’s WebJunction and the Association for Rural and Small Libraries are building momentum and connecting librarians in a Community of Practice that provides information, resources and inspiration for rural and small libraries.
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Published by rwatstein March 16th, 2008
in China, libraries and OCLC.
The National Library of China, the largest library in Asia, will add its bibliographic records to the OCLC WorldCat database, the world’s most comprehensive online resource for finding items held in libraries, making those records available to researchers worldwide. The National Library of China will develop software to convert the format of its records before they can be added to WorldCat. Following development and conversion of the records, the National Library of China anticipates that some 1.5 million records will be sent to OCLC in 2008. These records, when added to WorldCat, will display Chinese characters. The Library will continue adding records to WorldCat beyond 2008 once the format has been converted.
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Published by rwatstein February 25th, 2008
in museums and OCLC.
The $145,000 grant will be used to further develop standards for museum data exchange. OCLC will use the grant to fund projects involving OCLC Programs and Research and seven RLG Programs art museum partners to build an information architecture and model behaviors that museums can use to routinely exchange data. This initiative will result in the creation of a low-barrier/no-cost batch export capability out of the collections management system used by the participating museums (GallerySystems TMS), as well as a test of data exchange processes using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH).
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Published by rwatstein January 20th, 2008
in libraries and OCLC.
Global library cooperative Online Computer Library Center, Inc. (OCLC) has announced that following results from several pilots, the Cornell University Library, the State Library of Ohio and the University of Delaware Library have signed agreements to use WorldCat Local. WorldCat Local is a new service that combines the cooperative power of OCLC member libraries worldwide with the ability to customise WorldCat.org as a solution for local discovery and delivery services.
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Published by rwatstein December 22nd, 2007
in OCLC and cataloging.
Global library cooperative Online Computer Library Center, Inc. (OCLC) has announced that it is conducting a pilot project to explore the viability and efficiency of capturing metadata from publishers and vendors upstream. Further, it plans to enhance that metadata in WorldCat, an online resource for finding library materials. The move is expected to provide added value to libraries and publishers by enhancing and delivering data that can work in multiple contexts and systems.
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Published by rwatstein December 16th, 2007
in OCLC.
In the report, Jay Jordan, OCLC President and Chief Executive Officer, wrote that fiscal 2007 was “an exciting and innovative year for the cooperative. We achieved remarkable growth, introduced new services and enhanced existing ones. At the same time, we made significant progress toward the goal of becoming a globally integrated organization.”
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Published by rwatstein November 20th, 2007
in OCLC.
WorldCat.org, the destination site that lets Web searchers discover materials in the collections of WorldCat-participating libraries, has introduced links to the WorldCat Identities service developed by OCLC Research. WorldCat Identities presents an “identity” or profile of a particular person or company based on information and associations stored in the WorldCat bibliographic database. Profiled people can be authors, musicians, actors, directors and others in key creative roles; profiled companies can be publishers, film studios and other firms responsible for releasing a work.
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OCLC, the world’s largest library research and service organization, has released the third in a series of reports that scan the information landscape to provide data, analyses and opinions about users’ behaviors and expectations in today’s networked world. The new international report, Sharing, Privacy and Trust in Our Networked World examines four primary areas: Web user practices and preferences on their favorite social sites; User attitudes about sharing and receiving information on social spaces, commercial sites and library sites ; Information privacy; what matters and what doesn’t; U.S. librarian social networking practices and preferences; their views on privacy, policy and social networks for libraries.
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Published by rwatstein July 21st, 2007
in OCLC.
OCLC and Zepheira, LLC will work together to rearchitect OCLC’s Persistent URL (PURL) service to more effectively support the management of a “Web of data.” The software developed will be released under an Open Source Software license allowing PURLs and the PURL infrastructure to be used in various applications for public or proprietary use. OCLC and Zepheira are collaborating to extend the open and inclusive community of PURL users.
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Technology has permeated 21st century libraries, impacting the environment for both users and staff. At all levels of library service, a host of new skills and knowledge are now required as an integral part of working in a library. The objective of this report is to support library staff in maintaining public access computing programs. The report is divided into three sections. “Technology Competencies for Patron Assistance” defines skills that frontline library staff need to provide direct assistance to users on public computers. The “System Administration” section defines skills necessary to set up, configure and maintain public computers and networks. The “Management Competencies” are the umbrella over all, covering the master-planning, coordination and integration aspects of running a public access computing program.
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