WorldCat Local: WorldCat and WorldCat.org

Every 10 seconds an OCLC member library adds a record to WorldCat!

Details on the Online Union Catalog part of WorldCat.

Overview

• 650+ million articles with one-click access to full text (number of articles depends on the databases that we make available; full-text access depends on the licensed targets listed in our knowledge base)
• 24+ million digital items from trusted sources like Google Books, OAIster and HathiTrust; unique collections from leading institutional repositories and archives; NDLTD: the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
• 12+ million eBooks from leading aggregators and publishers
• 44+ million pieces of evaluative content (Tables of Contents, cover art, summaries, etc.) included at no additional charge
• 204+ million books in libraries worldwide (the online union catalog)

Details:

• Databases: A central index of content from multiple sources provides faster, more efficient results. Databases also available via remote connection.  View databases by name, subscription provider, central index availability or remote index inclusion.
• Institutional repository records 16 million
• Theses and dissertations 17 million
• Sound recordings 8.7 million
• Archival materials 17.7 million
• Musical scores 5.7 million
• evaluative content for music:

WorldCat.org has beefed up available information for more than 250,000 pop and classical music entries, thanks to a new partnership with allmusic.com and Rovi. Content added: 
Cover art
Track picks, ratings and reviews for popular music from All Music Guide
Song titles, composers and track times
Genres and styles
Release dates

Re: the online union catalog:

• 470+ languages from 112 countries and territories
  Many items cataloged in WorldCat cannot be discovered through any other resource. Records are constructed in many languages: WorldCat cataloging supports Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Cyrillic, Devanagari, Greek, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Tamil and Thai scripts, with each script including multiple languages.
• National catalogs increasingly represented
  OCLC continues to put much more of the "world" in WorldCat by partnering with national libraries from many countries. More than 40 national catalogs including those of Poland, Australia and New Zealand are now or will soon be part of WorldCat.
• Quality metadata
  Records are maintained cooperatively by catalogers and other information professionals; adhere to international standards; and are vetted by several OCLC and industry quality control programs. Libraries that contribute information to WorldCat are bound by the WorldCat Principles of Cooperation and follow particular guidelines regarding content.

Combined catalogs of over 40,000 libraries together listing over 200 million unique records! Records describe all formats of publications: books, papers, proceedings, archives and manuscripts; websites, databases and computer programs; musical scores and sound recordings; films, videos and slides; newspapers, journals and magazines; maps; etc.

Types of material described:

• books
• serials
• AV
• archival material
• etc.

History of the OLUC. LC, RLIN, etc.

Connexion.

Standards for description, access, FRBR, etc.

Making WorldCat open access

2003: Open WorldCat pilot project.   Websites and search engines give "find in a library" links to Open WorldCat.  Deep linking gets users to local OPACs.

(Meanwhile RLG offered RedLightGreen.)

WorldCat.org Live on August 8, 2006.

Starting in 2007:  Adding records describing over 100 million articles:  BLAME (British Lib, ArticleFirst, MedLine, ERIC), JSTOR, publishers, OAIster, etc.  Here's an old press release.

Many of our databases and other engines link book and serial cites to WorldCat.org

• Licensed dbs:  Guide to Reference, Ulrichs, etc.
• LibraryThing, Open Library, Google Books

uky.worldcat.org

Working Group members:

• Lybarger, Kathryn
• Vickery, Kelly
• Davis, Frank
• Jan Carver
• Laura Whayne
• Beth Kraemer

"The group is charged to review WorldCat Local’s current configuration for possible enhancements based on OCLC’s continuing product development; to recommend a process for changing settings, adding new resources and for communicating those changes going forward; to research the possibility of participating in the WorldCat knowledge base for improved resource sharing of electronic journals; and to conduct informational sessions focused on the capabilities of the WorldCat Local discovery system."