OCLC reached another milestone in its service migration from its own proprietary system to new technology when WorldCat was successfully moved to an Oracle platform in April.

The new WorldCat will support a variety of standards and formats, including Unicode, which gives OCLC the foundation to provide access to information in a number of languages and character sets.

OCLC chose Oracle as the new technological platform in May 2001. “Oracle was the only commercially available relational database software that we felt could support the complex text searching we need for our reference database—FirstSearch,” says Becky Babyak, Director, OCLC Database Technology and Development.

After successfully navigating a learning curve on the new technology, OCLC staff began the migration by moving Connexion databases to Oracle.

In January 2003, work began to move the WorldCat database, which comprises some 55 million records and more than 900 million holdings symbols, or 2.3 terabytes of data. Once the records were moved to the new system, staff concentrated on reaching the high level of performance FirstSearch users were accustomed to from the OCLC proprietary system.

“By using Oracle’s built-in partitioning capabilities, we were able to search the database in smaller pieces, aggregate results and exceed the performance levels we had reached with the OCLC proprietary system,” says Ms. Babyak. “This was a huge accomplishment for OCLC staff.”

The new architecture allows for a variety of new capabilities, such as custom views of library holdings, which makes it possible for OCLC to offer services for groups at the same high level of performance libraries expect from WorldCat.

The reference view of WorldCat is running on IBM 690 systems, 20 CPUs with 70 gigabytes of memory. OCLC will run applications on Linux servers. Still to come: moving online cataloging over to Oracle. Migration to the new technology platform is scheduled to be completed in 2005.

No question about it: library reference services are changing

Chances are you’re probably already taking or considering steps to improve your library’s reference services. If you are—but especially if you’re not—go to the Six Successful Ways to Evolve Your Reference Services on the OCLC Web site for ideas on how to create a more efficient service users will love. This helpful resource gives you tips for reevaluating and enhancing your library’s reference services. Use it to identify needs, dream about the perfect solution and more.

WebJunction celebrates first year

Launched May 12, 2003, WebJunction has steadily grown into a vibrant community of 7,000 library staff sharing resources for the work they do in libraries. Significant activities for the first year include:

• 183,000 visits to the WebJunction site from all 50 U.S. states, 12 Canadian provinces and territories and 40 other countries.
• 700 articles, handouts, lessons, worksheets and other content items published.
• 42 courses available at WebJunction’s online learning center.
• 2,000 messages posted to WebJunction’s message boards.

New life for special collections

CONTENTdm brings unique images online and into WorldCat for the Indiana Historical Society

The Indiana Historical Society (IHS) is the first organization to automatically add records from a digitized special collection to WorldCat using the CONTENTdm software package. Metadata from the society’s Postcards of Indiana, The Jay Small Collection was harvested, converted to MARC format and batchloaded into WorldCat by OCLC and is now available to library users via the FirstSearch service. The harvested metadata contains links that connect searchers to the collection’s digital images stored on IHS servers.

Salvatore G. Cilella, Jr., President and Chief Executive Officer, IHS, says the rationale behind the decision to register their collection for metadata harvesting by OCLC is “Access, access, access. We want researchers, wherever they are in the world, to find our materials and use them.”

OCLC is the exclusive distributor to libraries of CONTENTdm Digital Collection Management Software, an easy-to-use solution that helps institutions organize a variety of digital materials, including photographs, maps and historic documents. The WorldCat link feature enables CONTENTdm subscribers to share their unique collections with thousands of libraries worldwide.

NewYork State Library customizes OCLC report

The New York State Library’s Division of Library Development has used the OCLC membership report, Libraries: How They Stack Up, as a template to create its own economic snapshot of New York’s libraries.

The OCLC report provides a look at the economic impact of libraries throughout the world. The report contains interesting comparisons of library economics and activities to other sectors, professions and destinations in the worldwide economy.

Other libraries are encouraged to use the OCLC report as a template to create their own customizable versions, and share those versions with the library community.

From the President | The Next Generation of Librarians