Introducing the WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway and CONTENTdm Version 5.1

WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway

OCLC is pleased to introduce the WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway in its pilot phase. The WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway provides digital collection managers with a self-service capability to harvest their collection metadata to WorldCat. The collections' metadata is then available for end users to search and discover from WorldCat.org and WorldCat Local. End users can click through to a library's local CONTENTdm server to view and use its unique digital items.

Collection managers use the Digital Collection Gateway to create profiles for their digital content metadata to be regularly harvested, uploaded and converted to WorldCat format. After harvesting, WorldCat assigns and returns an OCLC number that is added to collection metadata to support future synchronizations. This unique identifier becomes a cross-reference for digital items in WorldCat and can be used for search and reference purposes.

During the pilot phase, the Digital Collection Gateway will only be accessible to selected early adopters. The Gateway is replacing the WorldCat Metadata Harvesting Program previously used by CONTENTdm collection managers to load digital content metadata to WorldCat. The WorldCat Metadata Harvesting Program is being discontinued with the introduction of the Gateway and CONTENTdm 5.1.

CONTENTdm 5.1

OCLC also is pleased to announce that CONTENTdm 5.1 is now available. CONTENTdm 5.1 introduces WorldCat Sync, a new feature that allows CONTENTdm users to register their collections with the WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway. In addition to WorldCat Sync, CONTENTdm 5.1 includes enhancements to EAD handling and indexing. 

Twelve new EAD elements have been added to the metadata mapping functionality allowing libraries to create more robust metadata records for their archival finding aids. Additionally, three new alternate EAD stylesheets are available to support the display of finding aids that use the <thead> element to format the contents list section.

With CONTENTdm 5.1, incremental indexing is now supported when minor edits are made to metadata within collections, saving time by eliminating the need to completely run the index every time changes are made. Additionally performance enhancements were made to indexing so that when full indexes are run it results in faster indexing times, especially when indexing large collections.

(2009 05 22)