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Put OCLC on your ALA Midwinter Schedule, January 14-19

Register online today for OCLC events and meetings

Get the latest information on OCLC services and programs at the ALA Midwinter meeting in Boston. Twenty-nine special events are planned, including the OCLC Update Breakfast, an OCLC Symposium discussing the impact of PC gaming on library services, and sessions on Open WorldCat, digital projects, group services, virtual reference and more. Demonstrations at OCLC Booth #2526 will feature Open WorldCat, FirstSearch, QuestionPoint/24x7, NetLibrary eBooks and Audiobooks, Connexion migration, interlibrary loan migration and digital collection and preservation services.

View OCLC ALA conference activities
ALA Midwinter Web site

2004 was the year of the blog

Dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster says “blog” topped the list of most looked-up terms on its Web site during the last 12 months. The word will now appear in the 2005 print version of Merriam-Webster’s dictionary and is defined as “a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments and often hyperlinks.” However, Oxford University Press says “blog” is already included in some print versions of its Oxford English Dictionary and has entered mainstream usage. According to the Pew Internet & American Life project, a blog is created every 5.8 seconds, and blog analysis firm Technorati estimates that the number of blogs in existence now exceeds 4.9 million.

Read the story on BBC News

Lehigh University uses OCLC Preservation Service Center to digitize large maps

The Lehigh Valley Geology Digital Library at Lehigh University contains a wealth of information about the geography, geology, meteorology and history of Lehigh and Northampton Counties in Pennsylvania. Three oversized maps digitized at 600 dpi by the OCLC Preservation Service Center in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania are part of the collection.

Go to the collection

OCLC welcomes these new member libraries

Glenbrook Elementary
Location: Streamwood, Illinois, USA
OCLC Symbol: ILGLE
OCLC Network: ILLINET

Hanover Countryside Elementary School
Location: Streamwood, Illinois, USA
OCLC Symbol: ILCYE
OCLC Network: ILLINET

Harriet Gifford Elementary School
Location: Elgin, Illinois, USA
OCLC Symbol: ILHGE
OCLC Network: ILLINET

Membership guidelines and protocols

WorldCat update

Every 10 seconds an OCLC member library adds a new record to WorldCat, which contained more than 57 million records representing 951,096,238 holding locations as of December 4, 2004. Every 4 seconds an OCLC member library fills an interlibrary loan request using WorldCat, which has supported 140,932,949 interlibrary loan requests as of December 4, 2004. A library user searches WorldCat using the OCLC FirstSearch service every second.

See the latest WorldCat record

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