The rush for gold records—mining value from metadata

This fiscal year has been a gold rush of sorts for the OCLC cooperative—members have added 17 million records to WorldCat as of March 31, 2007.

Fortunately, we recently recalibrated the odometer whereby we watch WorldCat grow. As you know, each record that enters the WorldCat bibliographic database receives a unique OCLC number. Until last November, there was a ceiling of 100 million OCLC numbers.

That 100 million must have seemed more than enough for the foreseeable future for Fred Kilgour and his staff back in 1971, when WorldCat began operation. Indeed, it took nearly four years for the OCLC cooperative to input the first million records. For the next 20 years, member libraries added between one and two million records annually.

In March, OCLC started loading some 35 million article citation records into WorldCat.org, and each of these records will get an OCLC number. Thus, Connexion users working in WorldCat will see a spike in the size of OCLC numbers as these citation records are added to and visible only on WorldCat.org. Indeed, some 15 million numbers were added in March, with the 100 millionth added on March 29 by Library Connection, Inc., Windsor, Connecticut.

As we accumulate metadata faster than ever, we are also starting to make use of it in new and exciting ways. Here are three creative applications.

• FictionFinder is an OCLC Research prototype that provides access to about 2.8 million works of fiction found in WorldCat. You can search not only by authors and titles, but also by genre, fictional character, imaginary place or setting and subject. When you discover an item you are interested in, FictionFinder can help you find a copy in a nearby library. You can see it in action at OCLC ResearchWorks.

• Another OCLC Research prototype is WorldCat Identities, which creates a summary page for personal and corporate names referenced in WorldCat. There are 18 million unique pages for authors in WorldCat. Each Identities page presents a visually attractive summary for the individual identified, including total works, genres, roles and classifications. There is also a publication timeline and an audience-level indicator. You can read more about this prototype in this issue of NextSpace.

• My final example is our new citation service, which was introduced in March. If you are working on WorldCat.org, you can now view a bibliographic record in various citation formats, including APA, Chicago, Harvard, MLA and Turabian, and then copy and paste your preferred format into your own applications.

For 36 years, thousands of catalogers and librarians have been contributing metadata to WorldCat, with each contribution creating a more valuable resource for the entire cooperative. Technological advances are enabling us to display our metadata in attractive, exciting and powerful new ways. In terms of network effects, the more institutions and records we have, the more benefits for our collaborative endeavor. As we find new ways to make our metadata work harder, we make WorldCat even more useful for more people around the world.

Jay Jordan
OCLC President and Chief Executive Officer

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