WorldCat link to CONTENTdm

DUBLIN, Ohio, USA, 19 June 2003 —Making digital collections accessible to thousands of libraries worldwide

The WorldCat link is a new feature of CONTENTdm version 3.5, to be released in July 2003. The new feature will allow libraries and other institutions to automatically add records of their unique digital collection materials to WorldCat.

CONTENTdm is an easy-to-use software solution that helps institutions organize a variety of digital materials, including photographs, maps and historic documents. CONTENTdm associates Dublin Core metadata with the digitized items and stores them locally. With the WorldCat link to CONTENTdm, metadata harvested automatically from CONTENTdm servers are then converted to MARC format, loaded into WorldCat and made available to library patrons searching the OCLC FirstSearch service.

“The automatic harvesting of metadata for digital objects from CONTENTdm servers will give searchers of WorldCat access not only to the description of the digital object, but links to the objects themselves,” said Phyllis B. Spies, vice president, OCLC Worldwide Library Services. “This is another step in our ongoing effort to transform WorldCat from a bibliographic database and online union catalog to a globally networked information resource of text, graphics, sound and motion.”

Institutions using CONTENTdm see the WorldCat link as a means to getting more exposure for their special collections and unique items of interest to information seekers worldwide.

“We have used CONTENTdm to put a large, diverse and valuable set of digital collections online within the University of Washington Libraries,” said Lizabeth Wilson, director of University Libraries, University of Washington, and a member of the OCLC Board of Trustees. “The new WorldCat-CONTENTdm link is very exciting because it provides global access to our collections in the context of the leading library information discovery system-WorldCat.”

In addition to the WorldCat link, CONTENTdm version 3.5 will offer:

• Web templates ready to use out of the box or fully customizable to meet organizational needs
• Language support for Roman-based language character sets so that screens can be customized to support local languages, and users can build non-English collections and multi-lingual sites
• Viewer enhancements-such as multiple display options for search results, including titles only, thumbnails, a grid of selected fields that can be sorted, and a descriptive or bibliographic display similar to Web search tools-so collection owners can select the display mode most appropriate for their collections

For more information about CONTENTdm, see www.oclc.org/contentdm/.

Plus d'informations sur OCLC

Dewey, OCLC and WorldCat are registered trademarks of OCLC.