SkillSoft's growing selection of over 30,000 titles in a variety of subject areas will be represented in WorldCat with a link to the Books24x7 platform.

In addition, OCLC is loading the Books24x7 collection information into the WorldCat knowledge base, enabling OCLC cataloging libraries to easily set holdings in WorldCat for the titles to which they subscribe. WorldCat Local authenticated users will then be able to link directly to Books24x7 titles subscribed to and made available by their library from the corresponding WorldCat records.

"Working with OCLC will allow us to make the Books24x7 catalog more visible to library users through WorldCat," said Pam Boiros, Vice President, Product Management, SkillSoft. "Adding records for our Books24x7 collection to WorldCat will provide better integration within library systems, making our digital books more accessible and adding to the value of our collections for libraries and their users."

"Records representing the Books24x7 digital book collection are a welcome addition to WorldCat,” said Chip Nilges, OCLC Vice President, Business Development. "Libraries are adding more e-books to their collections. These records, together with links to Books24x7, make it easy for users to find and access the content they want. OCLC will continue to work with partners like SkillSoft to maximize the visibility and value of libraries' full collections."

To learn more about e-book and e-content partnerships with OCLC, contact Bill Carney, OCLC Content Manager, at carneyb@oclc.org.

About OCLC
Founded in 1967, OCLC is a nonprofit, membership, computer library service and research organization dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the world’s information and reducing library costs. More than 72,000 libraries in 170 countries have used OCLC services to locate, acquire, catalog, lend, preserve and manage library materials. Researchers, students, faculty, scholars, professional librarians and other information seekers use OCLC services to obtain bibliographic, abstract and full-text information when and where they need it. OCLC and its member libraries cooperatively produce and maintain WorldCat, the world’s largest online database for discovery of library resources. Search WorldCat.org on the Web. For more information, visit the OCLC website.

Additions to the popular discovery and delivery service include the following new member-requested features:

A-Z list completes the integrated OpenURL resolution functionality

A new A-Z journal list feature now available in WorldCat Local gives library users even more ways to find the journal or journal article that they’re looking for. Users can now browse a library’s collections with an integrated A-Z listing of available e-journals, made possible by the WorldCat knowledge base. The A-Z list completes the OpenURL resolver functionality available for WorldCat Local libraries: inbound and outbound linking and the A-Z list are included at no additional charge to subscribers.

The new A-Z list functionality includes tabs to find articles, eJournals and eBooks. With this enhancement,
WorldCat Local now includes complete OpenURL resolution at no additional charge.

Full-text searching coming soon

Full-text searching functionality is coming soon to WorldCat Local. This new feature will evolve as new full-text databases are loaded into the central index.

Persistent facet selection

Now as you browse through results pages, the facets you initially select will stay selected until you do a new search or manually change them. This will save time for searchers who navigate from records to a results list using their browser's “back” button.

Boolean updated

Thanks to member feedback, Boolean operators now work only when used in all caps (AND, OR, NOT). Lowercase versions of these words have been added to the Common Word Exclusion list:

English: a an and (lowercase) are as at be but by for from had have he her his how in is it not (lowercase) of on or (lowercase) that the this to was which with you

French: de la le les des un une

German: der das dass du er sie es wer wie mit am im in aus auf ist sein wird ihr ihre ihres als von mit dich dir mich mir mein sein kein wird

Anchored phrase searches

If you want to search for an exact phrase in a specific index, you can now use an equals sign (=) in combination with an index label. For example, the query ti=gone with the wind now searches for the anchored phrase “gone with the wind” in the title (ti) index. This will retrieve records containing exactly this phrase and only this phrase in the fields/subfields that are indexed for title search.

For regular phrase searching, you may also continue to enclose search terms in double quotes when using an index label in combination with a colon (:). For example, the query ti:"gone with the wind” searches for the phrase “gone with the wind” occurring anywhere within the fields/subfields that are indexed for title search and will therefore match on records containing, for example,  “gone with the wind revisited” or “Margaret Mitchell’s gone with the wind letters.”

Content updates

New content is added to WorldCat Local on a regular basis. The central index now includes three new databases:

• Oxford Handbooks Online from Oxford University Press
• Oxford Scholarship Online from Oxford University Press
• National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS) Abstracts Database from the U.S. Department of Justice (publicly available)

Six additional databases from EBSCO are now available for searching via remote access:

• Criminal Justice Abstracts
• Criminal Justice Abstracts with Full Text
• Educational Administration Abstracts
• Family Studies Abstracts
• Historical Abstracts with Full Text
• SocINDEX with Full Text

WorldCat Local provides access to books, journals and databases in a variety of formats from a variety of publishers and content providers from around the world; the digital collections of groups like HathiTrust, OAIster and Google Books; open access materials; and the collective resources of libraries worldwide through WorldCat.

WorldCat Local can offer users access to more than 1,600 databases and collections, and more than 614 million articles.

OCLC recently added content to the WorldCat Local central index, including:

• ABC-CLIO: World Religions: Belief, Culture and Controversy provides a virtual textbook that covers religion across the globe, making student research on faith and belief across humanity easier, and enabling a deeper understanding of the complex issues facing us in the 21st century.
• Accessible Archives, Inc.: Developed by dedicated instructors and students of American history, Accessible Archives’ databases contain the rich, comprehensive material found in leading historic periodicals and books. Eyewitness accounts of historical events, vivid descriptions of daily life, editorial observations, commerce as seen through advertisements, and genealogical records are available in a user-friendly online environment.
• ACM: The ACM Digital Library is the most comprehensive collection of full-text articles and bibliographic records in existence today covering the fields of computing and information technology. The full-text database includes the complete collection of ACM's publications, including journals, conference proceedings, magazines, newsletters, and multimedia titles
• Annual Reviews: Annual Reviews publications are among the most highly cited in the scientific literature, and are available in print and online to individuals, institutions, and consortia throughout the world.
• Cambridge University Press: Cambridge Companions Onlineis the electronic version of the renowned Cambridge Companions series, covering literature, philosophy, classics, religion and cultural studies. Over 300 Companions offer lively, accessible introductions to major writers, artists, philosophers, topics and periods. Historical Statistics of the United States is the standard source for the quantitative facts of American history. Lectrix is an innovative online resource which integrates selected classic works of Greek and Latin literature with commentaries from the world-renowned Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics series for word-by-word, click-by-click access. Shakespeare Survey Online makes all issues of the Survey, including over 90 percent of the original images, available online for the first time.
• Gale: With over 76 million records, Business & Company Resource Center is a premier electronic information solution for all academic disciplines, business researchers and entrepreneurs.
• Genealogy Today: Genealogy Today has been publishing genealogy data and offering innovative services since 1999. This site provides time-saving resources and the latest techniques available in genealogy research.
• HAPI: The Hispanic American Periodicals Index (HAPI) includes over 275,000 journal article citations about Central America, South America, the Caribbean, Mexico, Brazil, and Hispanics/Latinos in the United States. HAPI currently provides over 60,000 links to the full text of articles appearing in more than 600 key social science and humanities journals published throughout the world.

In addition, the following vendor record collections are now available in WorldCat Local and WorldCat.org for libraries that subscribe to this content and have purchased MARC records from the content provider:

• Cassidy Cataloguing: Westlaw IV - Law Journals and Law Reviews, Westlaw VI - International E-treatises, and Westlaw VII - Legal Newsletters are now available through WorldCat Local.

OCLC also has recently signed agreements with the following providers to add content into WorldCat Local:

• Religious and Theological Abstracts provides objective summaries of articles appearing in scholarly journals in the fields of Religion and Theology.
• The Berkeley Electronic Press: Libraries are increasingly using the Digital Commons platform to enable their faculty and students to publish open access, original scholarship. Digital Commons subscribers will now be able to select the high-value scholarly content, including library-hosted peer review journal content, they would like to make discoverable via WorldCat. The service will be available as part of the growing suite of Digital Commons publishing services, and will serve to further increase the discovery of this open access and original scholarship.

OCLC continues to negotiate access to critical library content on behalf of the cooperative to ensure access to libraries’ most popular resources. To view a list of databases and collections from these and other publishers available through WorldCat Local, visit the website.

For more information, visit the WorldCat Local website.

About OCLC
Founded in 1967, OCLC is a nonprofit, membership, computer library service and research organization dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the world’s information and reducing library costs. More than 72,000 libraries in 170 countries have used OCLC services to locate, acquire, catalog, lend, preserve and manage library materials. Researchers, students, faculty, scholars, professional librarians and other information seekers use OCLC services to obtain bibliographic, abstract and full-text information when and where they need it. OCLC and its member libraries cooperatively produce and maintain WorldCat, the world’s largest online database for discovery of library resources. Search WorldCat on the Web at www.worldcat.org. For more information, visit www.oclc.org.

The latest additions to the popular discovery and delivery service include the following new member-requested features:

Availability views on brief results
Now users can see if an item is available from their initial results screens for books, serials and articles. This availability information is always accurate and up-to-the–minute, because WorldCat Local uses a real-time call to a library's OPAC. For additional types of eContent such as eSerials, availability information can be found on the detailed record.

Local Holdings Records now searchable
The ability to search local bibliographic data through WorldCat Local was added in June 2011. Now, Local Holdings Records (LHRs) are also searchable. LHRs are separate holdings records attached to a related WorldCat bibliographic record that provide local holdings details beyond the OCLC institution symbol, such as a call number or special collection designation.

The ability to display and now search local holdings information ensures that user discovery will support the years of valuable local data entries made by library staff members. When a library adds its local data to a WorldCat Local site, it is available only to users of that site, and will not display to other WorldCat Local library sites.

Article links, branch information now available for mobile use
Mobile views for WorldCat Local now support access to articles and online links, in addition to monographs. This feature is available to institutions that have loaded information into the WorldCat knowledge base, which is available at no additional charge for OCLC cataloging members. In addition, information on branch campuses and public library branches are now also available via the mobile views for WorldCat Local libraries.

JSTOR recently announced that it would make the full text of its Early Journal Content freely accessible to anyone in the world. These works are also available to be discovered through OCLC services.

The Early Journal Content” from JSTOR is defined as those works “published prior to 1923 in the United States and prior to 1870 elsewhere.” This subset of content is estimated to be roughly 6% of the journal content on JSTOR, which includes articles from more than 1,400 journals.

A cooperative partnership with JSTOR has been in place since 2009. Since that time, OCLC has indexed and loaded the metadata for more than 4.6 million articles—and continues to add additional new content through monthly updates. Document metadata available through WorldCat.org and WorldCat Local begins in 1603 and covers an international range of publishers.

Users affiliated with WorldCat Local libraries and WorldCat.org users will discover records for Early Journal Content on JSTOR included in result sets. Examples of Early Journal Content articles available through WorldCat.org include “Municipal Socialism and Its Economic Limitations from Political Science Quarterly (1909) and “On the True Date of the Rosetta Stone, and on the Inferences Deducible from It” from The Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy (1843).  A user may discover the item and simply click the embedded jstor.org link under the heading to “Find a copy online” to access the full-text of the article.

Publishers and services such as JSTOR gain valuable visibility by working directly with OCLC to make metadata and content for entire collections available through OCLC services such as WorldCat.org and WorldCat Local. Library users benefit by having a single place to discover rich, relevant materials in libraries worldwide.

Atlas Systems, the leading provider of time-saving solutions for libraries, has seen a significant increase in interest in the Ares E-reserves software among Canadian libraries looking to integrate multiple systems, improve workflow, and streamline requests for copyright permissions. Ares licensees in Canada include University of Guelph, University of British Columbia, Ryerson University, University of Waterloo, Wilfrid Laurier University, Carleton University, and York University.

According to Alex McCulloch, Head of Circulation Services, University of Waterloo, the library’s need for acquiring copyright permissions was growing, which drove their decision to find a system that would integrate copyright with reserves. “The Ares queues allow library staff to track the progress of copyright permission requests. They can easily produce reports that show how many publishers have been contacted, how many transactions there have been, and how much they are spending. Copyright information is archived in one place with the item request, which makes it easier to track when renewing requests on those same items.”
 
Ophelia Cheung, Audio Visual & Reserve Services Librarian, Ryerson Library, said a primary appeal of Ares was the ability to use Blackboard as their portal. “Ares offers integration with our Blackboard course management system, enabling faculty, students and library staff to access e-reserves with the Blackboard interface without a separate authentication. Ares also will let us manage print and digital reserves in one system, which we weren’t able to do when we tried managing reserves in Blackboard.”

Daniel Boivin, Executive Director, OCLC Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean, said Ares solves multiple reserves challenges for Canadian libraries. OCLC Canada serves as the distributor for Ares throughout Canada.

“Ares streamlines the reserves process, saving libraries time and money. Libraries reduce reliance on email communication with faculty and instead track interactions in one system. Instructors can clone classes and easily access usage statistics on the web. Better access to statistics helps faculty evaluate their choice of reserve materials and can lead to fewer requests for copyright permission,” Boivin added.

For more information, please contact OCLC Canada by calling 1-888-658-6583, or by sending an e-mail to canada@oclc.org.


About Atlas Systems
For more than fifteen years, Atlas Systems has been exclusively dedicated to developing software, training and consulting solutions that enable libraries to transform their user services and maximize workflow efficiency. Atlas is best known for creating the ILLiad interlibrary loan management system now distributed by OCLC and used by more than 1,100 libraries worldwide. Focused on bringing the benefits of automation to library processes that have not been addressed by other software services, Atlas has introduced Ares, an electronic reserves solution, and Aeon, an online request and workflow management system specifically designed for special collections libraries and archives. For more information, visit www.atlas-sys.com.