WorldCat is a
union catalog
A union catalog is a combined library catalog describing the collections of a number of libraries. Union catalogs have been created in a range of media, including book format, microform, cards and more recently, networked electronic databases. ...
that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions (mostly
libraries
A library is a collection of Document, materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or electronic media, digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a ...
), in many countries, that are current or past members of the
OCLC
OCLC, Inc., doing business as OCLC, See also: is an American nonprofit cooperative organization "that provides shared technology services, original research, and community programs for its membership and the library community at large". It was ...
global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc.
Many of the OCLC member libraries collectively maintain WorldCat's
database
In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases sp ...
, the world's largest
bibliographic database
A bibliographic database is a database of bibliographic records, an organized digital collection of references to published literature, including journal and newspaper articles, conference proceedings, reports, government and legal publications, p ...
.
The database includes other information sources in addition to member library collections. OCLC makes WorldCat itself available free to libraries, but the catalog is the foundation for other subscription OCLC services (such as
resource sharing
In computing, a shared resource, or network share, is a computer resource made available from one host to other hosts on a computer network.
It is a device or piece of information on a computer that can be remotely accessed from another compu ...
and collection management). WorldCat is used by librarians for cataloging and research and by the general public.
, WorldCat contained over 540 million bibliographic records in 483 languages, representing over 3 billion physical and digital library assets,
and the WorldCat persons dataset (
mined from WorldCat) included over 100 million people.
History
OCLC
OCLC, Inc., doing business as OCLC, See also: is an American nonprofit cooperative organization "that provides shared technology services, original research, and community programs for its membership and the library community at large". It was ...
was founded in 1967 under the leadership of
Fred Kilgour
Frederick Gridley Kilgour (January 6, 1914 – July 31, 2006) was an American librarian and educator known as the founding director of OCLC (Online Computer Library Center), an international computer library network and database. He was its pre ...
.
That same year, OCLC began to develop the union catalog technology that would later evolve into WorldCat; the first catalog records were added in 1971.
In 2003, OCLC began the "Open WorldCat" pilot program, making abbreviated records from a subset of WorldCat available to partner web sites and booksellers, to increase the accessibility of its subscribing member libraries' collections.
In October 2005, the OCLC technical staff began a
wiki
A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pu ...
project, WikiD, allowing readers to add commentary and structured-field information associated with any WorldCat record. WikiD was later phased out, although WorldCat later incorporated
user-generated content
User-generated content (UGC), alternatively known as user-created content (UCC), is any form of content, such as images, videos, text, testimonials, and audio, that has been posted by users on online platforms such as social media, discussion f ...
in other ways.
In 2006, it became possible for anyone to search WorldCat directly at its open website WorldCat.org,
not only through the subscription FirstSearch interface where it had been available on the web to subscribing libraries for more than a decade before. Options for more sophisticated searches of WorldCat have remained available through the FirstSearch interface.
In 2007, WorldCat Identities began providing pages for 20 million "identities", which are
metadata
Metadata is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including:
* Descriptive metadata – the descriptive ...
about names—predominantly authors and persons who are the subjects of published titles.
In 2017, OCLC's WorldCat Search
API
An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how ...
was integrated into the cite tool of Wikipedia's
VisualEditor
VisualEditor (VE) is an online rich-text editor for MediaWiki-powered wikis that provides a direct visual way to edit pages based on the "what you see is what you get" principle. It was developed by the Wikimedia Foundation in partnership with ...
, allowing Wikipedia editors to cite sources from WorldCat easily.
Beginning in 2017, OCLC and the
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...
have collaborated to make the Internet Archive's records of digitized books available in WorldCat.
In August 2022, OCLC launched a "redesigned and reimagined" WorldCat.org website with the stated goal "to offer greater accessibility to the collections". The website now requires the use of
JavaScript
JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of Website, websites use JavaScript on the Client (computing), client side ...
and is therefore no longer accessible for users of older web browsers or those that have
JavaScript disabled for
security reasons. The update also removed users' book reviews and replaced them with reviews from
Amazon
Amazon most often refers to:
* Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology
* Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin
* Amazon River, in South America
* Amazon (company), an American multinational technology c ...
subsidiary
GoodReads
Goodreads is an American social cataloging website and a subsidiary of Amazon that allows individuals to search its database of books, annotations, quotes, and reviews. Users can sign up and register books to generate library catalogs and read ...
.
System architecture
Local catalogs of many OCLC member libraries are intermittently synchronized with the WorldCat database. WorldCat allows participating institutions to add direct links from WorldCat to their own local catalog entries for particular items, which enables the user to click through to the local catalog to quickly determine an item's real-time status (for example, whether or not it is checked out).
In a small percentage of libraries, the local catalog is also run by OCLC using an
integrated library system
An integrated library system (ILS), also known as a library management system (LMS),
is an enterprise resource planning system for a library, used to track items owned, orders made, bills paid, and patrons who have borrowed.
An ILS usually is co ...
called WorldCat Discovery and WorldShare Management Services.
Library contributions to WorldCat are made via the Connexion computer program, which was introduced in 2001; its predecessor, OCLC Passport, was phased out in May 2005.
Cataloging
In library and information science, cataloging ( US) or cataloguing ( UK) is the process of creating metadata representing information resources, such as books, sound recordings, moving images, etc. Cataloging provides information such as auth ...
librarians may also use the WorldShare Record Manager or WorldCat Metadata API for similar purposes.
See also
*
Copac
Copac (originally an acronym of Consortium of Online Public Access Catalogues) was a union catalogue which provided free access to the merged online catalogues of many major research libraries and specialist libraries in the United Kingdom and Ire ...
*
Faceted Application of Subject Terminology Faceted Application of Subject Terminology (FAST) is a general use controlled vocabulary based on the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). FAST is developed as a part of WorldCat by OCLC, Inc., with the goal of making subject cataloging less ...
(FAST)
*
List of academic databases and search engines
This article contains a representative list of notable databases and search engines useful in an academic setting for finding and accessing articles in academic journals, institutional repositories, archives, or other collections of scientific and ...
*
Open Library
Open Library is an online project intended to create "one web page for every book ever published". Created by Aaron Swartz, Brewster Kahle, Alexis Rossi, Anand Chitipothu, and Rebecca Malamud, Open Library is a project of the Internet Archive, ...
References
Further reading
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* See also: Information about licensing of WorldCat records and some other OCLC data.
External links
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* Information on the OCLC website about WorldCat.
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{{Authority control
Bibliographic databases and indexes
Cooperatives
Library catalogues
OCLC