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Open WorldCat brings the library to the user on the Web

Newest feature will enable users to buy books online through Baker & Taylor

With Open WorldCat, people can find library resources with the Web tools they use everyday.

PC Magazine named OCLC’s Open WorldCat to its Top 100 Sites list, and The Charleston Advisor called Open WorldCat the Best End-User Product “for making key WorldCat entries available through major search engines such as Google and Yahoo!” Over the past several months, OCLC has added more features and enhancements that are making it easy for Web searchers to find and get the information they need from library collections through their favorite Web search sites.

The newest feature available soon will enable users in the United States to buy books online that they find using Open WorldCat through Baker & Taylor, a global information and entertainment services company that offers books, videos, music, games and services to libraries. OCLC will pursue the best prices and discounts available for consumers, who will identify their library as part of the transaction. A portion of the proceeds from the book sales will be shared with the named libraries through credits on their OCLC invoices. OCLC hopes to expand this feature to libraries outside the United States, to other content formats and to additional vendors in the future.

Other recent features added to Open WorldCat include an Ask a Librarian pilot, new search tools and “deep links” into library online public access catalogs.

View news release

Top technology trends from the LITA blog

Here is Eric Lease Morgan’s list of top technology trends published in the Library and Information Technology Association blog for the 2005 ALA Annual Meeting.

Live CD’s and massive storage devices are increasingly making the CPU of computers commodity resources.
Web Services, a technique of disseminating XML data over the Web, are playing an increasingly important role in the dissemination of data and information.
We are increasingly seeing commercial and non-commercial information accessible side-by-side.
The preservation of digital materials is a pressing problem.
You can decreasingly expect people to come to your Web site for content.
Customization is not going away, and gathering personal information is not necessary for personalization.

View blog entry

Dazhi Jiao of Bloomington, Indiana (USA) wins OCLC Research Software Contest

A programmer and analyst for the Digital Library Program and Library Electronic Text Resource Service (LETRS) at Indiana University, Dazhi (David) won the contest with a submission that includes a ranked list of harvested citations from OAI repositories in Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC) record displays.

The contest judges said that David’s entry demonstrated an innovative way of integrating OPACs with harvested metadata and made good use of open source software from OCLC.

View announcement
View OPAC system with OAI integration

OCLC welcomes these new member libraries

Community Unit School District U-46
Location: Elgin, Illinois, USA
OCLC Symbol: ILUSD
OCLC Network: ILLINET

Washington Middle School
Location: Aurora, Colorado, USA
OCLC Symbol: ILWAM
OCLC Network: ILLINET

Imperial County Free Library
Location: El Centro, California, USA
OCLC Symbol: CAICF
OCLC Network: OCLC Western Service Center

Membership guidelines and protocols

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 60 million bibliographic records and holdings information contributed by more than 8,600 libraries around the world. The new 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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OCLC Abstracts uses the Internet to deliver timely information about OCLC services, programs, news and events directly to subscribers’ desktops. This e-journal augments and complements OCLC’s Web site and print communications.