OCLC Canada Newsletter

Ernie Ingles, associate vice-president, Learning Systems, and chief librarian, University of Alberta, has been elected to the OCLC Members Council

Mr. Ingles will serve as a Council delegate for a three-year term. His first meeting as the OCLC Canada delegate will be in October of 2002.

"It is my privilege and honour to represent Canadian libraries as a delegate on the Members Council," said Mr. Ingles. "My sincere intention is to interpret Canadian interests and perspective to OCLC, which will help enable Canadian libraries to fulfill their service obligations utilizing the dynamic products and services of the collective. To do this, I need input from our community. I will be contacting members to better understand their needs and better articulate their concerns. I hope I can help OCLC and its Canadian members work together to meet the needs of our users."

Mr. Ingles vast experience and expertise, numerous contacts in the library community and involvement with the OCLC Canada Advisory Council will benefit the Canadian library community. We at OCLC Canada look forward to working closely with Mr. Ingles for the next three years.

Please visit http://www.oclc.org/memberscouncil/ for more information on the OCLC Members Council.

OCLC WorldCat : a world of information

WorldCat is the heart of the OCLC cooperative. It embodies the ideal of library collaboration, providing access to a virtual collection that no single library could ever possess. Did you know that one of the oldest items catalogued in WorldCat is a terra cotta cone with Babylonean inscription dated from 2100 B.C.?

Last June, the 50 millionth record was entered in WorldCat. For more information and statistics on WorldCat go to this link: http://www.oclc.org/worldcat/.

Connecting you to WorldCat with Connexion

OCLC launched the first phase of the OCLC Connexion service July 1, 2002. Connexion is the new face of OCLC cataloging, providing one-stop access to integrated cataloging tools and to WorldCat.

The initial release uses a browser interface for many functions now found in OCLC's various cataloging services. Functions of the OCLC CORC service, CatExpress service and other options, such as Dewey services, are now included in Connexion.

Eventually, all OCLC cataloging interfaces will merge into Connexion to provide a single interface for all cataloging needs.

The web version of Connexion will be updated quarterly. A Windows-based client version will follow in mid-2003 to provide functionality not supported by today's web browsers.

A free training session via the web will be offer on October 23 at 1:30PM EST. More information will be posted on the OCLC Canada listserv.

CONTENTdm

OCLC Digital & Preservation Resources is now offering the CONTENTdm Software Suite as a complete solution for libraries developing online digital collections to provide preservation and access to special collections.

The CONTENTdm Software Suite is based on more than six years of development in collaboration with archivists and library professionals. With its ability to handle virtually all media types, CONTENTdm supports a diverse set of collection items, including photographs, slides, maps, yearbooks, fully transcribed diaries, rare books, audio and video clips, postcards and any other asset accessible via a Web browser. Features on CONTENTdm, system requirements, documentation and sample of digital collections on CONTENTdm can be found at the following URL: http://www.oclc.org/contentdm/.

Olive Software

OCLC Digital & Preservation Resources will use Olive Software to help libraries provide full online searchable access to their historic newspapers so that these valuable resources can be preserved and made accessible over the World Wide Web. Olive Software enables digitization of historic materials by providing two unique benefits: making digitization practical by significantly reducing time and cost; and enabling browser-based, user-friendly access to and searching of retrospective newspaper collections. Collections digitized using Olive Software are fully searchable down to the article level. The software can be acquired locally or used on a hosted version at OCLC. Features of the Olive Software, service features and a sample of the Olive search engine can be found at the following URL: http://www.olivesoftware.com.

Coutts Library Services, Inc. joins PromptCat service

Coutts Library Services, Inc., U.S. and Canada divisions is the newest vendor to participate in the OCLC PromptCat service. An automated copy cataloging service, PromptCat works with your materials vendors to streamline copy cataloging by providing OCLC-MARC records and setting holdings for titles reported by your vendor. For more information visit http://www.oclc.org/promptcat/.

Staff addition and promotion

OCLC Canada has recently assigned staff members to serve libraries in Eastern Canada and Ontario, a move designed to better meet the needs of users in each part of the country.

Andy Spilioe recently joined OCLC Canada as a Library Services Consultant for Eastern Canada (Quebec and the Atlantic provinces). Mr. Spilioe was previously an account manager with SIRSI Canada, and before that, with DRA Information Inc. He holds a master's degree in library and information studies from McGill University.

"With the arrival of Andy at OCLC Canada, we are now in a much better position to effectively serve our existing and future users," said Daniel Boivin, Director, OCLC Canada. "OCLC Canada has experienced tremendous growth in the past five years to more than 600 users. Andy's knowledge of the Canadian library market and his experience will be valuable to our Eastern Canadian users."

Sylvain Robichaud, formerly Library Services Specialist in Chambly, Québec, has been promoted to Library Services Consultant for Ontario. Sylvain will be serving the Ontario library community from a new office in Ottawa. Prior to joining OCLC, Mr. Robichaud worked for QA-International as a terminologist and at QA Digital as a sales director/product manager. He also worked for the parent publishing company, Éditions Québec-Amérique International, as director of the Research Department.

Mr. Robichaud is a graduate of the Université de Montréal, where he holds a bachelor's degree in linguistics and a master's degree in library and information science. "Sylvain has made a significant contribution to OCLC Canada and I'm convinced that he will be even more valuable as he becomes part of the Ontario library community," said Mr. Boivin.

Cataloguing Catalogues

by Les Moor, Assistant Manager,
OCLC Canada, LTS Library Technical Services

"Future librarians will thank us not for our heroic public service efforts, but only for the collections we succeed in leaving behind."—Merrill Distad, Associate Director of Libraries, University of Alberta Libraries.

LTS Library Technical Services, a division of OCLC Canada, is cataloguing and processing an important collection of art catalogues for the University of Alberta Libraries.

This collection has an interesting history. Merrill Distad got a call from an Ontario book dealer saying that he had acquired the warehouse stock of Worldwide Books, a New York publisher that specializes in art catalogues. Twenty thousand art catalogues were up for sale. The original plan was for the dealer to ship the volumes to the University "on approval". But as the boxes arrived and Distad and the Library's bibliographers examined their contents, they changed their mind about the terms of the deal. Distad relates, "the more we saw of the quality of the material and the breadth of coverage, the more we thought we should buy them all." Which is exactly what they did. "By buying the entire lot we got them for a unit price of $2.91," muses Distad.

Before long, the fifth floor of the Cameron Library at the University of Alberta was jammed with art catalogues. With artists, historians, and researchers already excited about the arrival of the collection, the University needed to have them catalogued and processed as soon as possible. So they turned to OCLC LTS.

LTS and the U of A have a long history together, beginning in 1994 when the University contracted with ISM Library Technical Services to provide ongoing cataloguing and processing of their current acquisitions and donations.

Since that time LTS has processed hundreds of thousands of titles for the U of A and a number of special collections, but none so unique as this.

The collection includes catalogues of Degas, Watteau, Japanese robots, Picasso, silver shows, automobile retrospectives, and industrial designs, just to name a few, and includes exhibitions held around the world as far back as 1910. The catalogues range from ephemeral pamphlets to massive folio volumes.

Ellen Symons, OCLC LTS's Architecture and Fine Arts Specialist, remarks, "the catalogues are in just about every European language, even Welsh. There are also catalogues in Japanese and Hebrew. Most of them range from the 1960s to the mid-1990s, and represent established artists and artists just starting their careers. There are exhibitions on every aspect of art, from painting and sculpture to video art, set design, antiquities and architecture. Most of them are new to WorldCat (the OCLC Online Union Catalogue), and require original cataloguing. The enrichment they will provide to WorldCat is substantial."

Asked about the value of this collection in the Edmonton Journal, Distad remarked, "Incalculable. Its research potential is enormous, not just in the traditional fine arts but in wild and wacky things like toy robots, painted saws, and in textiles, ceramics…the research potential is quite mind-boggling. It is limited only by the imaginations of the people who will take advantage of the collection."

The University plans to house many of the catalogues in the Rutherford Library, which houses the fine arts collection. The duplicates and more obscure items will go to the "BARD"-the University's Books and Record Depository-a specialized, climate-controlled facility designed for the storage and retrieval of up to 4,000,000 of the library's less-frequently used items.

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