WorldCat Registry now includes library card field

Photo attribution: ilovelibraries.org
Library Card Sign-up

September is national library card sign-up month for libraries in the United States, so there’s no better time to take advantage of the latest new field added to the WorldCat Registry—the Library Card Form page. This new field lets you add the URL for your library card sign-up form to your Registry profile. Find it in the “Name and Location” section of your profile. Once you add it, soon new users who find your library through WorldCat.org will be able to apply for a library card immediately.

Add your library card sign-up form URL to your WorldCat Registry profile now >>

More WorldCat news

Facebook apps for back-to school

The WorldCat CiteMe app was recently recognized in the article, “Back to School: 15 Essential Web Tools for Students” by Mashable, the world's largest blog focused exclusively on Web 2.0 and Social Media news. There are two Facebook apps for WorldCat:

• WorldCat – an app that lets you find items in WorldCat from right within Facebook
• CiteMe – an app that delivers formatted citations from WorldCat in one of 5 standard styles: APA, Chicago, Harvard, MLA or Turabian.

  Add the apps to your library’s Facebook page today, and then check out the article for other good apps and tips to get back in the school swing of things.

With this functionality update, the eligibility requirements for the WorldCat Search API have also been updated.

New applications for the service will require that the library contributes to WorldCat and subscribes to WorldCat on FirstSearch or maintains a WorldCat subscription.

All of the more than 200 current WorldCat Search API WSKeys will remain active through at least Sept. 1, 2010. Any future request, however, will need to meet these new eligibility requirements.

Dawn Hendricks, WorldCat Search API product manager, explains that "current WorldCat Search API users are encouraged to continue creating new apps and mashups with the service to provide additional value for their libraries."

A new API for all: WorldCat Basic
OCLC announces its plans to offer a simple API into WorldCat for anyone and everyone in the world to use, for noncommercial use. Called the WorldCat Basic API, it will provide a mashable access point for lightweight apps built by developers who may or may not have ties to the library community.

Planned for release later this year, the WorldCat Basic API will use OpenSearch technology and return feeds in Atom and RSS. Results include OCLC number links to WorldCat.org, ISBNs and formatted citations.

"We have been wanting to do a completely open API to WorldCat for a long time now," remarks Roy Tennant, one of the OCLC Developer Network founders. "I am eager to see it in action."

Developers everywhere are encouraged to exercise their creativity to create new mash-ups that make use of WorldCat data through the APIs and other WorldCat widgets.

OCLC Web Services continue to offer ways to connect people with knowledge through libraries, and for libraries to reap the benefits of library cooperation.

Even if you're not planning to attend SXSW yourself, you are encouraged to make your voice heard. Go to http://bit.ly/vuPu5 and pick the thumbs-up sign. You'll be asked to register, but it's a very simple process.

The selection process closes on Friday, Sept. 4, so take action now to help raise the visibility of online library content to a wider audience.

For several years now, WorldCat has been organised according to the FRBR model that allows grouping of various editions of publications (for example, reprints, translations, performances, digitized copies) into works.  Sometimes users require particular manifestations and sometimes not, so it is desirable to cater for both needs by allowing navigation from works to manifestations and vice versa.

The expanded xOCLCNUM service now returns variant manifestation level identifiers (OCN, ISBN and LCCN) and the OWI.   In addition to starting with an OCN, ISBN or LCCN as an entry point into the API, OWI is now permitted as a starting point.  For details and examples, see:  http://xisbn.worldcat.org/xisbnadmin/xoclcnum/api.htm

Systems using the service are able to expand displays using the identifiers returned in the API, for example the API could be called behind a button labeled "find alternative editions".    The service could also be used by systems wishing to cluster search results by work, though performance requirements may preclude the option for clustering larger result sets on the fly.  In anticipation of this, OCLC has a prototype service to complement the API that provides a machine readable table of OCN and OWI specific to a catalogue’s subset of WorldCat.

The OCN / OWI identifier combination is important as a means of linking records for particular resources as they occur in multiple databases.  Only 30% of resources in WorldCat have an international identifier such as ISBN and a recent study has shown that this applies to recently published materials as well as those published before international identifiers came into being in the second half of the 20th century. 

For example, between 1970 and 1990, there are on average 9 million records per decade without international identifiers. OCLC is continues to evolve its identifier services and encourages adoption of its identifiers by external databases. In this way the identifiers can be used for navigating among web databases, acting as a lynch pin for mash-ups.

Gain access to xOCLCnum (a part of xISBN) through the WorldCat Affiliates page on the WorldCat.org Web site.

• xISSN now supports ISSN-L and RSSURL field, such as
  http://xissn.worldcat.org/webservices/xid/issn/1095-9203?method=getMetadata&fl=issnl,rssurl

ISSN-L data is obtained from ISSN agency, and rssurl is obtained from ticTOCS. xISSN also adds values to both data set, for example, xISSN automatically adds RSSURL to all ISSNs in same group.

xOCLCnum is a part of xISBN, xOCLCnum and now supports OCLC workid, such as:
http://xisbn.worldcat.org/webservices/xid/oclcnum/55847258?fl=owi

And you can query by workid as well:
http://xisbn.worldcat.org/webservices/xid/owi/owi718389

OCLC recommends using "owi[0-9]" in its whole format when you came upon workid, as it helps identify workid from any Web pages and facilitates interoperability and mashup creation.

Gain access to xISSN and xISBN (xOCLCnum) through the WorldCat Affiliates page on the WorldCat.org Web site.

The xISSN enhancement builds on the work of OCLC Developer Xiaoming Liu from the OCLC Mashathon in Amsterdam.

The recording of that session is now available on the OCLC Web site

Topics covered in the presentation included:

• searching for your Library profile,
• creating a personal account and associating this with the Registry Profile
• updating your details, deep linking and how the results looks in WorldCat.org
• non-OCLC services linking to WorldCat Registry data

What is the WorldCat Registry?

OCLC has been long known for centralization of metadata about the world’s collections in the WorldCat catalog. But libraries are defined by much more than its collections. There is also metadata about the institution itself: its identity, electronic services, relationships, staff contacts and other pertinent data. This metadata informs the processes and systems driving entire enterprise; however, maintenance of it can become a random, unstructured and time-consuming workflow.

Patron or library staff can eventually find appropriate information about libraries by performing enough searches. But that is not always possible or feasible for machine interactions. OCLC hopes that a better solution lies in centralization of essential metadata about the libraries and consortia in the free WorldCat Registry.

WorldCat Registry was introduced as a free machine-accessible service to libraries around the world in early 2007. Our main goals for the directory include being: trusted, comprehensive, and web accessible.

Learn about the WorldCat Registry data and services that utilize it, as well as how to manage your library’s online profile information.

Your library's profile page on WorldCat.org

Now libraries have profiles on WorldCat.org, too. Similar to the way a personal profile page gathers together your activities on WorldCat.org in a single page, now there's a page that showcases all your library's relevant information such as location, links to your catalog, Web site, virtual reference services and more.

The new Library Profile page also gives users an easy place to know what the latest items are that you've added to WorldCat—automatically. The featured items are updated once a month, and are presented by relative popularity (as determined by number of holdings in WorldCat.)

Library Profile pages will keep evolving. They are built from data in the WorldCat Registry, so you may want to check your library's Registry profile and make sure all the fields are populated and up-to-date.

Update your library's WorldCat Registry information now

More WorldCat news

Permalink is back! We heard you, and the WorldCat permalink is back on the interface. A great way to reference materials on blogs, tweets and more, the permalink sits right above the "more like this" box. Keep linking into WorldCat to keep increasing the visibility of library materials in popular Web search engine results.

Shelf location by e-mail, a la WorldCat

WorldCat.org has long-enabled "e-mail this" functionality. Now it's even more flexible, as users can custom edit the message and even receive shelf location and availability information at the same time, if you're a WorldCat Local library.

Need a quick catch-up on all that's happened lately with WorldCat.org?

Synch up with WorldCat.org with our latest Webinar recording. You'll see a demo of all the latest features, hear how the WorldCat Mobile pilot is doing and get a quick refresher on how to update your WorldCat Registry profile.

Save your WorldCat searches

If you've ever needed to recreate a specific search, this nifty new feature will be a real time saver. Just refine your query as usual, and click the “Save this Search” box in the upper right of the results screen. This way you can perform known complex searches in a single click, and help users self-serve by knowing the latest materials available in a WorldCat library on their chosen topic.

Get the picture: cover art now on brief results You asked for it, now WorldCat has it: cover art on brief search results. Cover art helps many people identify materials more quickly. So now users will see cover art on lists, brief and detailed results pages.

New keyword search widget now available

The latest WorldCat widget is now ready for your download: Keyword Search. Weighing in at 300 pixels wide, this beauty is perfect for subject-specific Web pages and blogs. You customize it with specific search terms initially, so that relevant materials available through WorldCat.org are automatically displayed to your site visitors.

Profile enhancements: popularity tracking

You may not think your lists, reviews, ratings and tags in WorldCat are interesting to anyone else…but now you can see for yourself through a new ticker to show how many times your profile has been viewed. Having a robust profile is another way that you can show people that you are a librarian when they view a list.

More WorldCat news

WorldCat featured in US News & World Report blog
WorldCat.org was recently featured in a US News & World Report blog about how students can get more out of today's academic library. See the 10 featured tips at the Professor's Guide blog.

Tell the world Why You Love WorldCat

It can be a simple as 10 seconds of telling the world why you love a specific WorldCat.org feature (10 seconds), or as involved as relating the time you found a digitized image of your great-great grandfather's apple orchard. Whatever your story, we're collecting your WorldCat tributes in video form to help make sure the world knows about WorldCat. See the latest from YouTube, and then make yours and upload it.

Shibboleth defines a common framework for access management that is being adopted by education and commercial sectors across the world.

If you are a registered Federation member and wish to take advantage of FirstSearch through Shibboleth, you will need to first set up OCLC as an Identity Provider. The OCLC Service Provider entity ID is defined in the ukfederation-metadata.xml file as: entityID="https://shib.oclc.org/shibboleth".

Then contact OCLC UK Support to:

• Inform OCLC which Identity Provider entityID to use
• Request a FirstSearch authorization or specify which existing FirstSearch authorization is to be used. OCLC requires the eduPersonEntitlement attribute to specify which FirstSearch authorization to use. The entitlement string value to configure is: urn:mace:oclc.org:FirstSearchAuthorization.

Test the URL at: https://shib.oclc.org:2443/fs

For additional details on access options for FirstSearch, please see the related documentation.

The UK Access Management Federation for Education and Research is supported by JISC and Becta, and operated by JANET(UK). The federation provides a single solution to access online resources and services for education and research.

OCLC supports the Shibboleth project.

Planned for April 4-9 in Dallas, Texas, USA, the CODI/UUGI Joint Conference brings together two users groups of the SirsiDynix product lines to share experiences and ideas.

Mr. Bowden's session will show that EZproxy can be configured to meet the needs of any library. He will explore a variety of configurations that include simple authentication, how to set up groups, block IP ranges and more. The session is titled "EZproxy: To Infinity and Beyond" and will be held on Wednesday, April 8 from 1:30 pm to 2:30 pm in the Austin 1 conference room.

OCLC has donated a complimentary EZproxy license for one lucky session attendee.

The new xISBN bookmarklet automatically pulls new information from the Worldcat Registry on a monthly basis, so if a library maintains up-to-date information in the WorldCat Registry, its data will be automatically reflected in the new xISBN bookmarklet.

What is the xISBN bookmarklet?

Readers everywhere use Amazon.com (or BarnesandNoble.com, or other book sites) to find books of interest and then wonder if the book is available at the local library. The xISBN bookmarklet makes this easy: when you have a book information page from an online bookseller displayed in your browser, you simply click on xISBN bookmarklet to automatically check your library's OPAC for books with the same ISBN and other ISBNs related to the sought-after book.

The previous xISBN bookmarket supported more than 300 libraries; by ingesting WorldCat Registry OPAC information into the xISBN bookmarklet, it increases the number of supported libraries exponentially and also becomes more sustainable.

The Gateway, a part of the WorldCat Registry, is an OpenURL resolving Web service that allows users direct access to full-text articles and other online resources available from their library, if their library participates in the WorldCat® Registry.

The WorldCat Registry includes details for over 1,000 institutional resolvers, including more than 80 percent of Association of Research Libraries institutions.  Registration is free to all libraries.

This feature is available for anyone using RefShare to share a folder or database with a collaborator, regardless of whether their organization uses another OpenURL resolver within RefWorks. RefShare users will have the option to include an OpenURL provider, to include the WorldCat OpenURL option, or to use their organizations' OpenURL, if applicable.

 "Facilitating research and information discovery is what RefWorks is all about," says Colleen Stempien, Executive Director of Operations for RefWorks-COS. "Giving our users easier access to WorldCat resources really furthers our mission."

 "OCLC's goal is to provide access to library information where and when people need it," says Chip Nilges, OCLC Vice President, Business Development. "Including OCLC's OpenURL Gateway in RefWorks makes it possible for library patrons to link directly to full-text information available through their library from anywhere they can access the Internet."