Pricing

WorldCat local pricing-related FAQs

• How is WorldCat Local priced?
  
  WorldCat Local pricing includes an annual subscription fee and a one-time implementation fee. The subscription fee is based on the size of a library's user population. Contact an OCLC representative at libservices@oclc.org or your regional service provider to obtain pricing for your library.
• Is there a discount if an entire consortium agrees to purchase it?
  
  Consortium pricing is based on the characteristics and needs of the group. The per-library cost for WorldCat Local in a consortium purchase can be less than the price for an individual library.
• The costs of WorldCat Local are in addition to those of an ILS. How can a library justify this additional cost?
  

  When a library subscribes to WorldCat Local, it pays for a hosted service that expands discovery of its collection on the Web and better integrates the disparate resources it provides into that discovery experience. Users search collections through a single, simple Web interface and find:

  • Items in the traditional library catalog
  • Materials (increasingly, digital assets) in special collections outside the catalog
  • Article records from a growing number of familiar databases.

  In addition, integration of WorldCat Local with a library's delivery options insures that users can get the resources they identify through the service. The service displays delivery options that are appropriate to the needed resource, eliminating the need for users to move among multiple services to obtain the items they need.

  The breadth of the OCLC cooperative lets a library that implements WorldCat Local deliver a world of physical and electronic library-owned content to its users while still keeping the focus on the library's collections. WorldCat Local search results list local holdings first, followed by those of a consortium or group, and then those of all WorldCat® libraries globally.

  Libraries that manage timely updates of their holdings into WorldCat for discovery through WorldCat Local also ensure that resources in their collections will be discoverable on the open Web through WorldCat partners such as Google and Yahoo! Search, and social tools such as link sharing and list making.

  So, for an incremental cost, WorldCat Local libraries receive benefits far beyond any system they could have implemented independently. WorldCat Local absorbs the complexity of providing single-search and makes physical and electronic collections more discoverable and thus more easily accessed by library users.

• How can a smaller library pay for this additional service on top of the ILS it already maintains?
  
  Many smaller libraries that cannot support an individual subscription might choose to join or form a library group. Most often, group purchases reduce the level of financial commitment required of individual libraries.
• Is there a discount if my library subscribes to an OCLC product such as ILLiad?
  
  WorldCat Local pricing does not include discounts for libraries with existing subscriptions to other OCLC services such as ILLiad.
• Our ILL requests are done through a form that sends an e-mail to a dedicated e-mail address. Will World Cat Local allow us to continue to receive our ILL requests at this address?
  
  Yes. WorldCat Local will be set up to work with your existing resource sharing service.

• WorldCat Local
• At a glance
• Overview
• Interface features
• Promote WorldCat Local in your library
• Ordering
• Support, training and documentation