Skip to page content

Deutschland, Österreich, Schweiz (Deutsch) Ändern
WorldCat : A suite of integrated services

A suite of integrated services

Your library doesn't just use WorldCat—it becomes a part of it. The data your library and thousands of others contribute are the foundation for a suite of services that speed up and reduce the overall costs of many library workflows. You focus less on day-to-day backroom processes and can concentrate on your customers' needs and special projects.

Cataloguing and Metadata

WorldCat offers great flexibility in how you provide information about your collections. Use our full-featured (Connexion) or easy copy (CatExpress) cataloguing interfaces—cataloguers get high hit rates that save time, the ability to enter data in nearly all modern languages, and automated processes such as metadata extraction and record updates through authority linking.

Additional solutions include OCLC Batch Processing of holdings and several services that provide MARC records for—and programmatically add or update WorldCat holdings of—your purchased, subscription-based or repository content. These include WorldCat Cataloguing Partners (physical materials ordered from participating vendors), WorldCat Collection Sets (high-demand, subject-oriented content packages) and eSerials Holdings (ISSN-based serial resources). For your convenience, most WorldCat cataloguing services offer multiple options for import of records to your local system, including direct export, EDX and Web download.

Content and Collections

Your library can strengthen its collection in specific subject areas or popular formats with WorldCat-catalogued content offered directly by OCLC. You automatically get MARC records and WorldCat holdings set for titles in the CAMIO database of art-museum images, packaged Language Sets of non-English materials, and NetLibrary digital content platform comprised of more than 150,000 electronic books, audiobooks and journals.

Reference and Discovery

WorldCat's unique strength is how it encourages discovery both within your walls and across the Internet. The FirstSearch reference service helps onsite and authenticated remote users to find resources in your library first. Its full-featured WorldCat search facility greatly reduces complexity for patrons by enabling inbound and outbound links between WorldCat and other FirstSearch databases, your OPAC and OpenURL server, and many third-party information services and fulfillment options.

Information seekers on the Web who visit Google, Yahoo! and other popular sites can discover items in your collection through search-result links to WorldCat.org, where they identify their location, select your library and are redirected to the item record in your OPAC. Social networking tools and freely distributed code and software also at the site help library resources appeal to a new generation of users and spread WorldCat data further on the Web.

The breadth of information in WorldCat also permits new means of discovery beyond simple search, because the core bibliographic data can be reorganised and presented in unique ways. WorldCat Identities is an "About the Author" feature within WorldCat.org that lets people browse connections between library materials using biography as the framework. It serves both as alternate navigation for those already searching the WorldCat site and as a general entry point from other points on the Web: Identities' reference-page format encourages social linking, and many elements within each profile—such as an interactive publication timeline and subject-heading tag cloud—link back to appropriate WorldCat.org item records or search results.

Digital Collection Management

Catalogue and share digitised items with the world. WorldCat helps you showcase digital collections created with CONTENTdm management software or born-digital documents and images preserved in OCLC's Digital Archive.

Management Services and Systems

Make the most of your acquisitions budget using WorldCat Collection Analysis, which compares your collection to peer libraries or others in your group that have contributed records to WorldCat. Exportable, detailed reports reveal your subject-matter strengths, gaps and overlaps, and you save the expense of building your own analysis.

Web and Data Services

OCLC is creating new Web-enabled channels by which information about libraries and their collections can be collected and distributed across the Web. The free WorldCat Registry lets your institution maintain a single, up-to-date institutional profile of commonly referenced data (including street addresses, key contacts, identifying symbols/codes, OpenURL and other electronic-service URLs) that is easily shared with and referenced by vendors, consortium members, funding bodies and other stakeholders. Profile data also drives linking to local content and services in WorldCat.org as well as the OpenURL Gateway resolving service.

WorldCat data is re-used in Web services such as xISBN, which allows a Web site to query WorldCat and receive the ISBNs of all items related to a specific item based on contributed cataloguing metadata and associations made by WorldCat's FRBR algorithms. These services allow Web users at non-library sites to link directly to online catalogue records and electronic content without having to directly perform a search at WorldCat.org or your OPAC.