OCLC adding records to WorldCat for Google Books Library Project and HathiTrust Digital Library collections

DUBLIN, Ohio, USA, 5 April 2010—OCLC is adding records to WorldCat that represent digitized books from the Google Books Library Project and the HathiTrust Digital Library to provide greater access to and increased visibility of these rich digitized collections.

OCLC is working with libraries, Google and the HathiTrust to derive new MARC records that represent these digital collections based on the rich collection of print records contributed to WorldCat by the OCLC membership over the last 40 years. Searchers will begin seeing these records in WorldCat immediately. OCLC will continue to add records for these collections to WorldCat on an ongoing basis.

WorldCat searchers will be able to locate digitized books from these collections and link to the associated book landing page, and in some cases can access the full text of eBooks available through these significant initiatives.

"As part of its mission to make the world's information universally accessible and useful, Google is excited to be surfacing its digitized books through WorldCat," said Jon Orwant, Engineering Manager, Google Books. "We've scanned over 12 million books to date, and look forward to the time when every book in the world is discoverable online. Our partnership with OCLC is an important step toward that goal."

"HathiTrust is enthusiastic about the partnership with OCLC to build our catalog," said John Wilkin, Executive Director of the HathiTrust. "Simultaneously, HathiTrust is striving for greater comprehensiveness in its digital collection, while increasing our attention to coordinating the building of the digital collection with management of our associated print collections. The ability to situate our holdings in the world's most comprehensive and reliable catalog of library materials is a tremendous boon in those endeavors."

As a digital repository for the nation's great research libraries, the HathiTrust Digital Library brings together the immense collections of partner institutions. HathiTrust was conceived as a collaboration of the 13 universities of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation and the University of California system to establish a repository for these universities to archive and share their digitized collections. More about HathiTrust is at www.hathitrust.org/.

OCLC and the HathiTrust are working together to implement a public interface for the HathiTrust catalog through a WorldCat Local interface, to be introduced later this year.

"OCLC continues to work with libraries, publishers and other trusted partners to connect Web information seekers to the rich collections held in libraries through WorldCat," said Chip Nilges, Vice President, Business Development, OCLC. "WorldCat records from the Google Books Library Project and the HathiTrust Digital Library represent valuable digitized content users can discover at the point of need, through the Web. OCLC is committed to exploring new ways to maximize the visibility and value of libraries' full collections—print, electronic and digital collections."

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 171 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 Web site.

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