A new OCLC pilot gives libraries a simple, cost-effective way to contribute holdings to WorldCat for eSerials. The goal? Improve operational efficiency, facilitate discovery and drive use of these valuable eCollections.

By Tom Storey

In partnership with 22 OCLC libraries and four commercial vendors (TDNet, EBSCO, Serials Solutions and Ex Libris), OCLC is piloting a new service that will make it easy for libraries to add eHoldings to WorldCat without increasing their cataloging workload.

Through the eSerials holdings pilot, OCLC automatically sets and updates holdings each month for eSerials on behalf of pilot libraries that send, or authorize pilot partners to send, holdings information to OCLC. Pilot libraries also register their OpenURL resolvers with OCLC, which allows end users to easily access full-text online content. An optional MARC record update service synchronizes the library OPAC with WorldCat.

Between June and October 2005, OCLC set more than 270,000 holdings for eSerials for pilot libraries. The pilot will run through early 2006.

Among the benefits seen by pilot libraries so far:

• Resource sharing staff are able to fulfill more requests for materials from their electronic collections, which are now visible from within WorldCat Resource Sharing.

• End users can see which journals are available electronically from a library, and be directed to the appropriate online resource through the library’s local OpenURL resolver.

“It is essential to have our e-holdings in WorldCat,” says Janet Chisman, Washington State University, one of the pilot libraries. The six campus libraries at Washington State provide faculty and staff with access to more than 20,000 eJournals. “We are committed to moving from print to electronic for much of our serial collection and if we are going to continue resource sharing via ILL, we need this holdings information available. This is a very easy way to do that.”

Adds Michael Boock, Oregon State University, “For WorldCat to remain a viable source in the electronic era, it must be a reliable source of holdings information, regardless of format. As a user of WorldCat for ILLs, we hope that more libraries will participate at the conclusion of this trial so that we can better identify eHoldings sources. We also want WorldCat to represent our eHoldings in order to potentially use OCLC’s collection analysis tool.”

Moving forward, OCLC will explore similar pilots with different electronic formats, such as eBooks and eAudiobooks, theses and dissertations—even music files.

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