Looking back, looking forward

2011 will mark a significant milestone for the OCLC cooperative: the 40th anniversary of the WorldCat bibliographic database.

On August 26, 1971, OCLC Founder Frederick G. Kilgour and 54 Ohio libraries launched WorldCat (the OCLC online union catalog and shared cataloging system). It is tempting to state, “and the rest is history.” That, however, would be inaccurate, because WorldCat has always been about the future—the next series of enhancements, the next platform, the next record, the next holding.

The First Law of Technology says we invariably overestimate the short-term impact of new technologies while underestimating their longer-term effects. Let me present WorldCat as “Exhibit A.”

In the first year of operation of OCLC’s shared cataloging system, libraries used WorldCat to produce 3.4 million custom-printed catalog cards. The short-term impact of WorldCat as a source of catalog cards was widely heralded around the library community. By 1985, card production peaked at 131 million cards. Last fiscal year, OCLC printed just 1.6 million catalog cards.

I submit that we are just beginning to grasp the long-term implications of WorldCat. While libraries no longer use WorldCat very much for catalog cards, the database touches almost all aspects of library operations.

OCLC Research has been looking at ways to make the data in WorldCat work harder for libraries and their users. For example, OCLC researchers developed WorldCat Identities, which creates a summary page for the more than 25 million personal and corporate authors mentioned in WorldCat that includes such information as total works, genres, roles, classifications, a publication timeline, name authority and an audience-level indicator.

Two new experimental services are featured in the 2009/2010 OCLC Annual Report, which is now available on the OCLC Web site. WorldCat Genres enables users to browse WorldCat for authors, topics, characters and places by genre heading. Popular fiction genres include spy stories, love stories and science fiction. The MapFAST prototype uses Faceted Application of Subject Terminology (FAST) subject headings to map the geographic locations of library resources. Search for a town, and it will display WorldCat items related to that location within a specified radius.

Another way that we are tapping into the riches of WorldCat is through the Developer Network. Since 2008, approximately 70 developers working with OCLC Web Services staff have built more than 60 applications that are shared worldwide. These apps and others are accessed more than 10 million times a month.

OCLC has recently released WorldCat Mobile beta, which integrates WorldCat.org into the consumer wireless space and helps libraries appeal to the ever-growing audience of mobile device users.

WorldCat is central to our new Web-scale Management Services (WMS) in which library management functions such as acquisitions and circulation are delivered in the Internet cloud. Up-to-date WorldCat holdings are critical for libraries that will use these new services.

I am pleased to report that on September 27, 2010, The Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation, Ardmore, Oklahoma, became the first library to implement the production version of WMS.  On November 9, 2010, the BIBSYS library consortium in Norway announced that it will partner with OCLC to develop a new library management system for the consortium’s 100 academic libraries and the National Library based on WMS. In the meantime, we are now implementing a limited number of early adopters and preparing for a major launch of WMS in the coming year.

Libraries in the OCLC cooperative continue to move ever closer to the dream of a digital library that integrates library functions into a unified whole and which provides information to people when and where needed. As WorldCat enters its 40th year, it is still about the future.

Jay Jordan
OCLC President and Chief Executive Officer

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