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Worldwide (English) Change

About Group Access with WorldCat Resource Sharing

Groups Access Capability (GAC) organizations that use WorldCat Resource Sharing have two kinds of member libraries: Full members that use both WorldCat Resource Sharing and OCLC Cataloging, and selective members that use only resource sharing.

Group access profile

The group access profile lists all member libraries within the group and notes their membership level. OCLC assigns the group a group symbol. Each group must include at least one full member. A group may include major resource centers and document suppliers in its group access profile. To request group access profiling, contact your OCLC regional service provider.

Group access capability agent

Within each group access group, one member functions as the group's agent. It can be a regional service provider, a resource council, or a full member. The responsibilities of the agent are to:

  • Coordinate group profiling
  • Establish group policies
  • Coordinate ILL protocols within the group

Referral center

A group may designate one or more full members within the group access capability group as referral centers. Selective members include a referral center as the last symbol in the potential lender string. If the referral center cannot supply the material, it replaces the original lender string with five new lenders who communicate directly with the borrowing library. These new lenders do not have to be members of the group.

Add and maintain holdings

Location symbols are added automatically for full members through their cataloging activity. Batch processing can add or delete locations for selective members.

Selective member capabilities

Selective members can:

  • Act as the borrower or lender
  • Create and modify constant data records
  • Search WorldCat using all search keys
  • Display bibliographic records
  • Display holdings of fellow group members
  • Retrieve Union List displays representing holdings for their group access/Union List group
  • Search the ILL Policies Directory
  • Search the Authority File
  • Use Help
  • Have ILL requests referred outside the group by a referral agent
  • Perform all OCLC ILL functions

Selective member limitations

Selective members cannot:

  • Send requests directly to institutions outside their group access capability group. (Their referral agent does this for them.)
  • Display holdings for institutions outside of their group access capability group.
  • View bibliographic records in their entirety.

Fields not seen by selective members

MARC 21 fields that are not visible to selective users include:

  • Subject headings
  • Some note fields (including field 505 Content Notes)
  • Call number fields
  • Physical description (300 field)

Some of these fields are indexed for searching. When a selective member enters a keyword search, it is possible to retrieve a record even though the field containing the keyword is suppressed from the record display.