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The Dewey Decimal Classification debuts in German

The Project DDC team at Die Deutsche Bibliothek completes work on the first German translation of the DDC

The new translation next to a copy of Melvil Dewey's first edition of 1876.

The translation is based on DDC 22 and was published in both print and Web versions. The Web version of the German translation is called Melvil and can be used as a classification tool as well as a retrieval tool for documents with Dewey numbers.

The Dewey Decimal Classification system has been translated into more than 30 languages and serves library users in over 200,000 libraries in 135 countries worldwide, making it the world's most widely used library classification system. More than 60 of these countries use the DDC to organize their national bibliographies.

DDC Deutsch
DDC Web site

Researching the effectiveness of e-reference

A new study published in Information Research on user satisfaction of referrals via a collaborative virtual reference service finds that:

Referrals were approximately 30 percent of all transactions.
In contrast to referrals, completely answered questions were 56.4 percent of transactions, which is very close to the well-known 55 percent reference success rate.
Circulation questions were the most frequently asked questions, (48.9 percent), followed by subject-based research questions (25.8 percent), simple factual questions (9.6 percent), resource access (8.9 percent) and local library-related information queries (6.8 percent).
To improve user satisfaction, librarians need to distinguish between two types of referrals: the ‘expert research' referrals conducive to collaborative virtual reference services (sharing expertise and resources in answering difficult subject-based research questions); and the ‘re-directional, local' referrals that increase unnecessary question traffic, thereby being detrimental to effective use of collaborative reference (referring users back to local libraries to resolve circulation questions).

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NetLibrary announces new,
pre-selected subject collections for libraries

Subject sets are groups of NetLibrary eBook titles covering specific subjects for public, academic, school and community college libraries. They were developed by NetLibrary collection development librarians, and are ideally suited to support heavily-used subject areas and popular degree programs.

NetLibrary has created 62 different subject sets that cover 18 general topic areas, all designed to serve a variety of library and user interests. For example, libraries that need business content might be interested in six different business subject sets, including: accounting, international business, economics, finance, and management and leadership, as well as the general business set for less specialized titles. Other subject sets range from career development to nursing and allied health to engineering and technology. Each subject set includes delivery of an OCLC MARC record for every title at no extra charge.

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NetLibrary subject sets

Rebranding the library

OCLC welcomes these new member libraries

DeVry University - Calgary Campus
Location: Calgary, Alberta, Canada
OCLC Symbol: DVITE
OCLC Network: OCLC Canada

The Art Institute of Indianapolis
Location: Indianapolis, Indiana, USA
OCLC Symbol: INAIA
OCLC Network: INCOLSA

Membership guidelines and protocols

OCLC RSS feeds

WorldCat update

WorldCat is the world’s most comprehensive bibliographic database. Updated at a rate of nearly one new record every 10 seconds, WorldCat contains more than 63 million bibliographic records and 1 billion holdings contributed by more than 9,000 libraries around the world. The Open WorldCat program makes the items in library collections—physical and digital, popular or special—discoverable by people searching the Internet.

See the latest WorldCat record

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