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Group Services : At a glance

Group Services at a glance

OCLC Group Services is the customized way to select and use services from OCLC. Any type of library group—from small cooperatives to statewide, multi-type consortia—can control costs, leverage existing investments and serve users more effectively with their choice of WorldCat-based services.

Benefits

  • Control your costs—Because Group Services are hosted by OCLC, your group avoids the expenses of hardware, software and local clients.
  • Leverage your investments—OCLC helps your library group leverage the investments it already has made in OCLC cataloging and resource sharing, as well as in your local automation systems.
  • Predictable pricing—Your library group can receive a single, annual subscription price for all desired OCLC services.
  • Unlimited use—Your group will have unlimited use of OCLC cataloging and resource sharing services.
  • Maximum exposure for your libraries' collections—With OCLC's WorldCat-related programs, like WorldCat.org, people broadly searching the Web at sites such as Yahoo! Search  and Google can find the items in your library group's collections.
  • Web-accessible—OCLC provides a group catalog that is accessible via the Web for your cataloging, reference and resource sharing needs.
  • Ongoing support—OCLC staff provide ongoing support, including implementation, maintenance and promotional assistance.

Features

  • Ability to search collections of all the libraries in your group, subsets of your group, as well as locally, regionally or around the world.
  • Availability of the group catalog to the public via the Internet.
  • Access to all of the WorldCat network via WorldCat Resource Sharing.
  • Unlimited resource sharing services.
  • Unlimited cataloging services.
  • Other OCLC services that help meet the needs of your group.
  • Fast response time—95% of search results are returned in 5 seconds or less
  • Statistics on database usage by the group and by library
  • Availability of six interface languages, including Spanish and Chinese (traditional and simplified)

Future enhancements

Current group catalogs will migrate to the WorldCat.org platform beginning in 2008. All new group catalogs will be built on WorldCat.org.

Related services

Group purchases of these OCLC services can further strengthen your group's cooperative efforts.

  • Cataloging Partners—Receive OCLC MARC records for non-book and non-English materials ordered through participating materials vendors.
  • CONTENTdm—Build and manage your digital collections quickly and easily with this affordable software solution.
  • Contract Cataloging—Convert all of your libraries' collections and use contract cataloging services from a quality cataloging partner.
  • NetLibrary eBooks and eAudiobooks—Provide access to a comprehensive collection of research, reference and reading materials online.
  • QuestionPoint—Use cooperative reference to respond to and manage reference questions via the Web.
  • WorldCat Collection Analysis—Analyze your library or library group's collection and compare it to others without requiring extensive staff, time or financial resources.