Shared print and the collective collection

An effective shared print program empowers you to:

• Protect the scholarly record
• Share the costs of maintaining low-use titles
• Reclaim prime library space through responsible deselection

Our shared print registration, discovery, and decision support tools give you the data you need to support a comprehensive shared print program in your library or group.

WorldCat offers a representation of the global scholarly and cultural record through the lens of library collections. By maintaining holdings in WorldCat, your library joins thousands of others to collaborate and share your collections at scale.

As you think about the future of your print collection, there are new pressures on the use of library space, growing comfort with electronic and digital resources, and more opportunities to share print items with other libraries. Participating in a collective collection through WorldCat removes your obligation to own every print resource your users may request. Instead, you only need to connect with other libraries to access what you need.

With WorldCat as the foundation, we’re already helping many libraries manage down their local print collections with a responsible approach that respects the scholarly and cultural record. The OCLC services built on this foundation give you the information you need to make essential decisions about what print resources to share and what you can count on others to provide.

Register your commitments

Through WorldShare^® Collection Manager, you can easily register shared print retention commitments in WorldCat and contribute to the collective collection.

• Register single- and multi-part monographs and serials in bulk
• Eliminate the need for multiple profiles
• Enable group or agent registration 
• Submit and edit commitment metadata in MARC format, and output MARC records in multiple formats

The ability to register shared print retention commitments through Collection Manager is included with an OCLC Cataloging and Metadata Subscription or Holdings Registration Subscription.

Open your commitments to discovery

When other libraries can find your shared print commitments, you can better share your resources. When you register your shared print commitments in WorldCat, other libraries can find your resources through a variety of services—and you can also find their resources.

Shared print retention commitments are discoverable in a variety of OCLC services, each ideal for different use cases. For example, query collections in Collection Manager allow for bulk download of retention data. The WorldCat Metadata API offers dynamic access to registered commitments. FirstSearch and WorldShare Record Manager help you find shared print commitments in your regular workflows. And Choreo Insights provides the ability for you to analyze your collection from a shared print perspective.  

Analyze and visualize your collection

As you consider which print items you can commit to retain and share, you’ll need detailed information to support those choices. Our GreenGlass application combines your library’s data with data from WorldCat, such as title popularity, other libraries’ commitments, and open access availability. GreenGlass^® pulls this information into dynamic visualizations that support evidence-based decisions about which print titles to retain, move out of regular circulation, or deselect.

• Explore your collection in the context of the world’s collective collection
• Quickly model deselection and print management scenarios
• Generate custom reports and lists to support collection management and shared print activities

Connect with the community about shared print

The OCLC Community Center hosts communities where users can read news, participate in discussions, share ideas, register for events, and more. Individuals working on shared print can use these spaces to connect with each other and OCLC on topics related to registration, discovery, and decision support of the collective collection.

Community access is based upon your institution's current product subscriptions. If you don’t yet have login credentials, you can request them using this form.

Log in to the OCLC Community Center