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OCLC LABSHow does your collection rate?
Coming in early 2005, the OCLC Collection Analysis service will provide libraries and library groups with WorldCat-based collection management tools accessed through the OCLC FirstSearch service. The new service will help library staff to manage their collections more efficiently by helping them analyze the age and content of their collections; compare subject collections with those of peer libraries; and see unique titles, items held in common with comparison libraries—and items they don’t have. Libraries can also compare their collections to the holdings represented in various recommended collection development lists. “Libraries need to have thorough, current information to plan and manage their collections effectively,” said Glenda Lammers, Product Manager, OCLC Collection Analysis. “The new OCLC Collection Analysis service is being designed to provide that information to libraries and groups.” The WorldCat online collection management service will be available to users of WorldCat via the OCLC FirstSearch service. For more information, or to submit questions about his upcoming service, visit www.oclc.org/ collectionanalysis/
OCLC and MIT + Google add light to dark Web
OCLC Research staff is helping to set up a search process that will serve as an interface between Google and the universities involved in a DSpace pilot project. DSpace, developed jointly by MIT Libraries and Hewlett-Packard, is the digital library system that captures, stores, indexes, preserves and redistributes the intellectual output of a university’s research faculty in digital formats.Much of this scholarly information is difficult for search organizations to crawl, so it is invisible to commercial search engines. The pilot project will allow Google users to direct their searches to digital repositories of scholarly materials that contain academic papers, reports and other documents retained by academic institutions. University libraries are becoming aware of the need for comprehensive management of their universities’ digital assets, including the digitized resources and output of their faculties, according to Thom Hickey, Chief Scientist, OCLC Research. “DSpace is a major open-source system for managing institutional repositories,” said Hickey. “By contributing to its development and the ease of accessing resources managed under it, OCLC Research leverages the library community’s investment in knowledge organization, information storage and retrieval, metadata standards and our own technical expertise, in support of a system that is efficient, full-featured and freely available for the entire community.”
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new collection management capability on the OCLC FirstSearch service will allow
users to search for, print, display and download information about their collections
using their library holdings information in WorldCat.
OCLC is
working with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Google to help increase
the visibility of scholarly materials on the Web.
