Technology and Books for All

by Marie Lebert

2006: FREE WORLDCAT

[Overview]

WorldCat was created in 1971 by the non-profit OCLC (Online Computer Library Center) as the union catalog of the university libraries in the State of Ohio. Over the years, OCLC became a national and worldwide library cooperative, and WorldCat the largest library catalog in the world. In 2005, WorldCat had 61 million bibliographic records in 400 languages from 9,000 member libraries (paid subscription) in 112 countries. In 2006, 73 million bibliographic records were linking to 1 billion documents available in these libraries. In August 2006, WorldCat began to migrate to the web through the beta version of the new website WorldCat.org. Member libraries now provide free access to their catalogs and electronic resources: books, audio books, abstracts and full-text articles, photos, music CDs and videos. Another pioneer site was RedLightGreen, launched in Spring 2004 (with a beta version in Fall 2003) as the web version of the RLG Union Catalog, another major union catalog created in 1980 by the Research Libraries Group (RLG). RedLightGreen ended its service in November 2006, after a successful 3-year run, and RLG joined OCLC.

[In Depth (published in 1999)]

In 1998, two organizations - OCLC (Online Computer Library Center) and RLIN (Research Library Information Network) - were running international bibliographical databases through the internet.

The OCLC Online Computer Library Center is a non-profit, membership, library computer service and research organization dedicated to furthering access to the world's information and reducing information costs. More than 27,000 libraries in 65 countries were using OCLC services to manage their collections and to provide online reference services. The website was available in English, Chinese, French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish.

OCLC services included: access services; collections and technical services; reference services; resource sharing; Dewey Decimal Classification (published by OCLC Forest Press); and preservation resources. From its headquarters in Dublin, Ohio, OCLC operated one of the world's largest library information networks. Libraries in the US joined OCLC through their OCLC-affiliated regional networks. Libraries outside the US received OCLC services through OCLC Asia Pacific, OCLC Canada, OCLC Europe, OCLC Latin America and the Caribbean, or via international distributors.

OCLC was also running WorldCat - the name of the OCLC Online Union Catalog - which is a merged electronic catalog of library catalogs around the world, and the world's largest bibliographic database with its 38 million records (in early 1998) in 400 languages (with transliteration for non-Roman languages), and an annual increase of 2 million records.

WorldCat stemmed from a concept which is the same for all union catalogs: earn time to avoid the cataloguing of the same document by many catalogers worldwide. When they are about to catalog a publication, the catalogers of the member libraries search the OCLC catalog. If they find the record, they copy it in their own catalog and add some local information. If they don't find the record, they create it in the OCLC catalog, and this new record is immediately available to all the catalogers of the member libraries worldwide.

Unlike RLIN, another main union catalog that accepts several records for the same document (please see below), the OCLC Online Union Catalog accepts only one record per document, and asks its members not to create duplicate records for documents that were already cataloged. The records are created in USMARC format (MARC: Machine Readable Catalog) according to the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, 2nd version (AACR2).

What is the history of OCLC? "In 1967, the presidents of the colleges and universities in the state of Ohio founded the Ohio College Library Center (OCLC) to develop a computerized system in which the libraries of Ohio academic institutions could share resources and reduce costs. OCLC's first offices were in the Main Library on the campus of the Ohio State University (OSU), and its first computer room was housed in the OSU Research Center. It was from these academic roots that Frederick G. Kilgour, OCLC's first president, oversaw the growth of OCLC from a regional computer system for 54 Ohio colleges into an international network. In 1977, the Ohio members of OCLC adopted changes in the governance structure that enabled libraries outside Ohio to become members and participate in the election of the Board of Trustees; the Ohio College Library Center became OCLC, Inc. In 1981, the legal name of the corporation became OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. Today, OCLC serves more than 27,000 libraries of all types in the US and 64 other countries and territories." (excerpt from the 1998 website)

In early 1998, WorldCat had 38 million records - with one record per document. RLIN (Research Libraries Information Network) had 88 million records - with several records per document.

RLIN was run by the Research Libraries Group (RLG). The central RLIN database was a union catalog of 88 million items held in main libraries belonging to RLG member institutions, including research and specialized libraries, like law, technical, and corporate libraries.

RLIN included:

(1) records that described works cataloged by the Library of Congress, the National Library of Medicine, the US Government Printing Office, CONSER (Conversion of Serials Project), the British Library, the British National Bibliography, the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections, and RLG members and users;

(2) nearly all the books cataloged since 1968 and rapidly expanding coverage for older materials;

(3) information about non-book materials ranging from musical scores, films, videos, serials, maps, and recordings, to archival collections and machine-readable data files;

(4) unique on-line access to special resources, such as the United Nations' DOCFILE and CATFILE records, and the Rigler and Deutsch Index to pre-1950 commercial sound recordings;

(5) international book vendors' in-process records, that were transferred to bibliographers, acquisition services and catalogers, to order records or help them for cataloguing items in their own local databases.

RLIN also provided:

(1) A catalog of computer files. Machine-readable data files were useful to a growing number of disciplines. RLIN contained records describing a number of such files, from the full-text French literary works in the ARTFL Database to the statistical data collected by the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) at the University of Michigan;

(2) A catalog of archives and special collections. The archival and manuscript collections of research libraries, museums, state archives, and historical societies contained essential primary resources, but information about their contents was often elusive. Archivists and curators worked with RLG to create an automated format for these collections. In 1998, there were 500,000 records available in RLIN for archival collections located throughout North America. These records described many collections by personal name, organization, subject, and format.

RLIN also hosted the English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC), an invaluable research tool for scholars in English culture, language, and literature. This file provided extensive descriptions and holdings information for letterpress materials printed in UK or any of its dependencies in any language, from the beginnings of print to 1800 - as well as for materials printed in English anywhere else in the world. Produced by the ESTC editorial offices at the University of California, Riverside, and the British Library, in partnership with the American Antiquarian Society and over 1,600 libraries worldwide, the file was updated and expanded daily. ESTC served as a comprehensive bibliography of the hand-press era and as a census of surviving copies. ESTC included 420,000 records as of June 1998, from the beginnings of print (1473) through the 18th century - including materials ranging from Shakespeare and Greek New Testaments to anonymous ballads, broadsides, songs, advertisements and other ephemera.