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CONTENTdm bringing more unique images online and into WorldCat

Metadata from 10 digitized collections harvested into WorldCat

The Gerald R. Sherratt Library at Southern Utah University recently added 7,671 records from six special collections to WorldCat, the OCLC Online Union Catalog. Using the WorldCat-CONTENTdm link, metadata from the library's Branch Normal School, Dixie National Forest, Iron Mining District, Socotwa: Glen Canyon Voyage, Utah Parks Company and Southwest Utah Livestock Association collections were automatically harvested, converted to MARC format, and batchloaded into WorldCat by OCLC and are now available to library users through the OCLC FirstSearch service. The harvested metadata contains links that connect searchers to the collections' digital images.

The Gerald R. Sherratt Library is one of four libraries that collectively have added more than 9,000 records from their CONTENTdm collections to WorldCat. The others are: Broward County Library (Florida), Pequot Library (Connecticut) and Nashville Public Library. In April, the Indiana Historical Society was the first organization to add records from a digitized special collection to WorldCat.

OCLC is the exclusive distributor to libraries of CONTENTdm Digital Collection Management Software, an easy-to-use software solution that helps institutions organize a variety of digital materials, including photographs, maps and historic documents.

Connecting collections to WorldCat

Four futures for scientific and medical publishing

In an article at bmj.com, the Web site of the British Medical Journal, the future of scientific and medical publishing is profiled using publication models named after the Simpson Family television cartoon characters.

In the Marge world, academics innovate and publish primarily on the Web, not in journals; publishers must publish large numbers at low cost to succeed.
In the Homer world, publishers adapt to the electronic world and continue to publish research.
In the Lisa world, publishers have largely disappeared, and communication takes place mainly through global electronic conversations.
Publishers have also disappeared in the Bart world, where large organizations have become the main purveyors of research.

One letter writer commenting on the article says the winner will be Lisa in a “wiki wiki world.”

Read the article
Read the letter

Borrowing, lending functionality now in FirstSearch staff view

Resource sharing staff in libraries can now perform all basic interlibrary loan borrowing and lending tasks—plus enjoy new functionality—through the FirstSearch staff view. On August 15, these enhancements were made to FirstSearch to provide a more personalized experience and an improved workflow:

Full borrowing and lending functionality
Multiple holdings display options
Saved searches
Patron tracking of resource sharing requests

Stay up to date with “new directions in sharing” by subscribing to the OCLC Resource Sharing list, a broadcast-only distribution announcing the latest ILL news.

View all enhancements

OCLC welcomes the following new member libraries

Vestmannaeyjar Public Library
Location: Vestmannaeyjar, Iceland
OCLC Symbol: ISBOK
OCLC Network: OCLC PICA

Hellgate Elementary School District No. 4
Location: Missoula, Montana, USA
OCLC Symbol: HGTSD
OCLC Network: OCLC Western Service Center

Dublin Jerome High School
Location: Dublin, Ohio, USA
OCLC Symbol: JEROM

Membership guidelines and protocols

WorldCat update

Every 12 seconds an OCLC member library adds a new record to WorldCat, which contains more than 56 million records representing 932,573,395 holding locations as of August 21, 2004. Every 4 seconds an OCLC member library fills an interlibrary loan request using WorldCat, which has supported 137,951,098 interlibrary loan requests as of August 21, 2004. A library user searches WorldCat using the OCLC FirstSearch service every second.

See the latest WorldCat record

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