National Library participation in the OCLC global cooperative

Map of National Libraries

The OCLC cooperative has a long tradition of working with national libraries around the world to facilitate shared cataloging, record exchange, digitization, resource sharing and document delivery.

Thirty years ago, OCLC signed its first international agreement when Koninklijke Bibliotheek, the National Library of the Netherlands, obtained 400,000 records from WorldCat for nine Dutch libraries. In 1985, the British Library became the first national library outside the United States to begin contributing records to WorldCat when it started batchloading UKMARC records into WorldCat. And in the early 1970s, Library and Archives Canada, at that time called the National Library of Canada, began adding records for serials to WorldCat via the CONSER program.

Since then, 34 national libraries have begun adding digital images, national files and bibliographies to WorldCat by both batchloading and online contribution, exposing the richness of their collections to the worldwide library community. More importantly, the libraries are sharing information about their countries’ cultural heritage, scientific accomplishments and national identity with Web searchers from all parts of the globe through WorldCat.org.

WorldCat contains 76.2 million holdings from non-U.S. national libraries all over the world. In addition, OCLC plans to load more than 250 million records from national libraries and major institutions into WorldCat in the coming year.

Use this map to see what national libraries participate in the OCLC cooperative and how many records they have contributed to WorldCat.

Use the timeline to see a brief history of OCLC activities with national libraries outside of the United States.