Welcome to OCLC ResearchWorks, OCLC's research laboratory. ResearchWorks demonstrates a few of our ideas for applying new technologies to organize information. In some cases, they serve as examples of things you can develop or incorporate into your own systems.
Just a note: these are demonstrations. If something is not working on this page when you visit, let us know and please come back and try it again later.
ResearchWorks Activities
ArchiveGrid is a growing collection of nearly two million archival material descriptions that provides a foundation for OCLC Research collaboration and interactions with the archival community, and also serves as the basis for our experimentation and testing in text mining, data analysis, and discovery system applications and interfaces.
A Web interface for FAST Subject selection, assignFAST explores automating the manual selection of the Authorized and Use For headings based on autosuggest technology.
Got a book title from an online bookseller? Check whether your local library has it.
Classify is a FRBR-based prototype designed to support the assignment of classification numbers and subject headings for books, DVDs, CDs, and other types of materials.
Browse and search collections organized by the DDC.
FAST (Faceted Application of Subject Terminology)
FAST is an enumerative faceted subject heading schema derived from the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). FAST is easier to apply and can be successfully used by non-professionals.
The FAST Converter is a Web interface for the conversion of LCSH headings to FAST headings. Either single headings or small sets of bibliographic records can be converted. The intent of this Web site is to provide a learning tool to help familiarize users with FAST and the differences between FAST and LCSH.
FictionFinder: A FRBR-based Prototype for Fiction in WorldCat
FictionFinder is a FRBR-based prototype that provides access to over 2.9 million bibliographic records for fiction books, eBooks, and audio materials described in OCLC WorldCat.
The “info” URI Registry was set up on behalf of NISO to identify and describe registered “info” URIs.
Kindred Works is a demonstration interface built upon an experimental content-based recommender service. Various characteristics associated with a sample resource, such as classification numbers, subject headings, and genre terms, are matched to WorldCat to provide a list of recommendations.
mapFAST is a Google Maps mashup prototype designed to provide map based access to bibliographic records using FAST geographic authorities.
This project will study the use of MARC tags and subfields in WorldCat and produce reports to inform decisions about where we go from here.
Missing Materials Beta Procedure
In order to centralize information about stolen and missing rare books and special collections, this working group developed a procedure to “tag” records in WorldCat.org. The tagged records are then automatically fed to a blog, missingmaterials.org. Simultaneously, holdings are set in WorldCat, in order to alert prospective buyers and sellers.
OCLC Research's NACO Normalization Service enables systems to convert names and other text strings to a format more conducive to machine comparison and sorting.
OAICat is a Java Servlet implementation of the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) v2.0.
OCLC Crosswalk Web Service Demo
Translate a group of metadata records from one format to another.
PURLs (Persistent Uniform Resource Locators) are Web addresses that act as permanent identifiers in the face of a dynamic and changing Web infrastructure.
This project provides Web-based services for controlled vocabularies.
The NDLTD Union Catalog project focused on thesis metadata via the Open Archives Initiative's Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). This was a lightweight protocol for moving or sharing metadata that allowed synchronization of loosely coupled databases and mandates XML Dublin Core as the default metadata format.
View rich descriptions for books and other library materials.
Genre profiles allow users to browse genre terms for hundreds of titles, authors, subjects, characters, places, and more, ranked by popularity in WorldCat.
The WorldCat Identities Network gives users the opportunity to visually explore the interconnectivity and relationships between WorldCat Identities.
The WorldCat Identities Network gives users the opportunity to visually explore the interconnectivity and relationships between WorldCat Identities.
The activities listed on this page have prototypes or demonstrations you can explore and play with. These are explorations and works in progress. We invite you to play with these prototypes and send us your ideas.
A few of these activities have generated software that you can download and build upon. Go to our software page for a list of only those activities.
The OCLC Research Library Partnership has sponsored the activities with this mark.