Compiled by Jay Weitz

General News

OCLC Trustees Convene Council to Study, Develop New Record Use Policy

The OCLC Board of Trustees has convened a Record Use Policy Council, which will draw upon the fundamental values of the OCLC cooperative and engage with the global library community to develop the next generation of the WorldCat Record Use Policy. The intent is to recommend to the OCLC Board of Trustees a new policy that is aligned with the present and future information landscape. The new policy will replace the Guidelines for Use and Transfer of OCLC Derived Records that was developed in 1987. The formation of this council was one of the recommendations contained in the final report of the OCLC Review Board on the Principles of Shared Data Creation and Stewardship formed in January 2009 to represent the membership and inform OCLC on best practices for sharing library data. The Policy Council is also charged with carrying out the other recommendations contained in the final report, including development of a policy to enable expanding the role and value of WorldCat in the broad information ecosystem. The members of the OCLC Record Use Policy Council have agreed to undertake a significant body of work to canvass the current and future information needs of the library community and provide a broad and inclusive set of perspectives and experiences. Over the course of the next several months, the Record Use Policy Council will:

• Review key values and principles underlying the current guidelines developed in 1987.
• Develop success criteria for a revised policy or guidelines.
• Conduct and disseminate the results of an environmental scan of data-sharing policies.
• Evaluate findings from the environmental scan and draft a new policy and recommendations for implementation.
• Develop a formal, transparent, and well-managed process for vetting the new draft policy with the OCLC Regional Councils and the OCLC Global Council as the representatives of the OCLC membership.

The Record Use Policy Council will begin its work soon. The group will define an approach and timeline to carry out this important charge. The Council will submit a new draft policy and recommendations for implementation to the Chair of the OCLC Board of Trustees and OCLC President and CEO, for review and approval by the OCLC Board of Trustees in midyear 2010.

OCLC Announces New U.S. eNewsletter, OCLC Cooperative eNews

OCLC Cooperative eNews is a monthly newsletter dedicated to all U.S. OCLC members. It replaces the former OCLC Eastern Connection and OCLC Western Dispatch monthly eNewsletters. Cooperative eNews will feature member libraries and cultural heritage institutions and celebrate how we are all achieving more through cooperation and innovation. Future editions will include member stories, information on upcoming events, learning opportunities, and support tips. If you have ideas about stories for future editions of this eNewsletter, please send an e-mail to cooperativeenews@oclc.org . Subscription information and PDF files of all issues may be found on the OCLC Web site at http://www.oclc.org/us/en/cooperative/default.htm .

Cataloging and Metadata

OCLC Announces Agreements in Europe to Extend Coverage in WorldCat

In conjunction with the 75th IFLA General Conference and Assembly in August 2009 in Milan, Italy, OCLC announced that four new agreements have been signed with European national libraries and affiliated institutions that significantly increase the coverage of records in WorldCat and the visibility of libraries in WorldCat.org in the Europe and Middle East regions.

In Denmark, OCLC and Dansk BibliotekCenter (DBC) have agreed to load the Danish National Union Catalogue (DanBib) with holdings into WorldCat. DBC is responsible for providing the Danish national digital infrastructure as well as managing its national union catalog. The agreement is the result of a year-long pilot coordinated with the Danish Agency for Libraries and Media (DALM), the governmental administrative and advisory body responsible for public and research libraries. The pilot took place with the participation of academic and public libraries from across Denmark and will add approximately 10 million Danish records to WorldCat. In addition, a connection between WorldCat.org and bibliotek.dk will be orchestrated. bibliotek.dk is a national service managed by DBC to enable Danish citizens to request and receive items from any library in Denmark, free-of-charge via the Web.

In Switzerland, OCLC and the Informationsverbund Deutschschweiz (IDS) have signed an agreement to load the records from five IDS consortia to WorldCat. IDS, which also includes the National Libraries of Luxembourg and Liechtenstein, will be loading approximately 10 million bibliographic records and 16 million holdings. IDS wants to increase visibility for the libraries of Switzerland through WorldCat.org as well as gain access to the 130 million records in WorldCat for cataloging purposes.

In Slovenia, OCLC has finalized an agreement to load 3 million records later this year with IZUM, an organization which represents the interests of over 380 academic, public, and other libraries. The activities of IZUM are mainly engaged in the development and operation of the COBISS system and services (Co-operative Online Bibliographic System and Services), which represents the core of the library information system along with shared cataloging and many other library automation applications in Slovenia. IZUM also provides users in Slovenia with free access to a variety of other databases and services, including OCLC FirstSearch.

In Israel, MALMAD, a consortium of over 30 academic institutions, has just secured as part of their OCLC cataloging subscription a complete retrospective batch load of holdings data into WorldCat, which will ensure that all holdings will be visible through OCLC Connexion, OCLC FirstSearch, and WorldCat Resource Sharing.

For more information, visit the OCLC WorldCat Web site.

RDA and OCLC

RDA (Resource Description and Access) is the new cataloging standard that will replace AACR2. It is being developed by the Joint Steering Committee for the Development of RDA. Publication of the online, Web-based tool is planned for late in calendar year 2009. Publishers are the American Library Association, the Canadian Library Association and the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP). OCLC has participated actively in the process that is producing RDA through our ex-officio membership in the ALA Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access and through our representation on the MARC Advisory Committee. We also have staff participating in the Joint Steering Committee's two RDA Examples Groups and the RDA/MARC Working Group, which is preparing proposals for MARC 21 format change in support of RDA. In addition, OCLC is represented in the ALA RDA Implementation Task Force, which is planning for implementation activities in the U.S. OCLC staff have participated in program sessions sponsored by the Task Force with more participation scheduled for future sessions. OCLC staff have also recently joined staff from the three U.S. national libraries in discussions and planning for the testing/evaluation period that is planned for early in 2010. Cataloging staff in OCLC's Metadata Contract Services will be participating in the testing. Over the past several years, OCLC has also gained experience in creating FRBRized work sets based on bibliographic data in existing records and in creating similar relationships based on related ISBNs and ISSNs. There is also ongoing work using ONIX-based data created by publishers as the basis for records usable in library catalogs. All of this activity touches on aspects of RDA. OCLC staff are also participants in cataloging discussions within the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) and are active in the creation and maintenance of cataloging standards within that organization, including the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR), the Functional Requirements for Authority Data (FRAD), the International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD), and the UNIMARC Formats. In preparation for the early 2010 testing, OCLC has begun work to implement the MARC 21 changes approved by MARBI in recent meetings (including its meetings at ALA Annual in July 2009. These changes will be implemented in the context of OCLC's existing cataloging, resource sharing and discovery platforms. RDA offers the potential to change significantly how bibliographic data is created and used. These future possibilities that RDA online tool could facilitate will be considered as part of the development of next-generation systems.

ABES to Add French Sudoc Records to WorldCat

OCLC and ABES (l'Agence Bibliographique de l'Enseignement Supérieur), in France, have signed an agreement to load 9 million records from Système Universitaire de documentation (Sudoc), the cataloguing system for French academic libraries managed by ABES, into WorldCat. As a result of this agreement, collections of 110 participating Sudoc institutions that represent over 1,000 libraries will be visible to searchers worldwide through WorldCat.org. The addition of Sudoc records in WorldCat, planned for the first quarter of 2010, will increase visibility of collections from the French academic world. The agreement to load Sudoc records into WorldCat follows that of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), which signed a similar agreement in June 2009. Since 2002, ABES has been cataloguing with Sudoc, which is based on OCLC's Central Bibliographic System (CBS). Loading CBS records into WorldCat makes possible the option for real-time updates from CBS into WorldCat, via SRU update, which is currently being used effectively for the Dutch union catalogue and the union catalogue of Australia. With Sudoc records in the WorldCat database, these libraries are able to use other useful and efficient tools such as WorldCat Collection Analysis, which allows libraries to compare their collections with those of peer libraries.

OCLC Announces Partnership with WALDO

OCLC and the Westchester Academic Library Directors Organization (WALDO) are pleased to announce a partnership to provide expanded electronic content offerings to OCLC member libraries in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New Jersey, New York, and Vermont. This new partnership will give OCLC member libraries more options for obtaining a wide range of electronic resources and services that complement OCLC cooperative product and service offerings. WALDO offers consortia packages and pricing for Web accessible databases and services, and serves the academic, public, and special library communities. A full list of databases and services is located at www.waldolib.org/databases.asp . The OCLC Partner Program brings value-added services to OCLC member institutions through the development of strategic partnerships with other library service providers. OCLC works with Partners to provide members expanded service options and choices that enhance participation in the OCLC cooperative. For more information about the OCLC Partner Program, or to learn more about becoming an OCLC Partner to deliver new service options or training to members, contact Irene Hoffman, Executive Director, OCLC Partner Program.

OCLC Offers Metadata Services for Publishers

OCLC now offers Metadata Services for Publishers, a new service that takes publishers' ONIX title metadata, enriches it using WorldCat mining and mapping techniques, and delivers the enhanced ONIX metadata back to the publishers for use in their systems. The publishers' enhanced metadata is then made available early in the data creation process to libraries for use in selection, acquisition, and technical services workflows. Information seekers also benefit from Web discovery of this metadata via WorldCat.org, the Web destination for discovery of library resources. OCLC's Metadata Services for Publishers is the result of a pilot project that explored the viability and efficiency of capturing metadata from publishers and vendors upstream and enhancing that metadata in WorldCat. OCLC enrichment of title metadata saves publishers time and resources by streamlining internal workflows, and reducing in-house intellectual work and manipulation of title metadata. OCLC also provides validation, authentication, and standardization of publisher data for use by various partners (vendors, aggregators, booksellers) to increase the marketability of publisher ONIX title metadata throughout the publisher supply chain. The metadata services pilot followed release of the 2007 “Report on the Future of Bibliographic Control” by the Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control, formed by the Library of Congress to address changes in how libraries must do their work in the digital information era. The ability to leverage upstream publisher data effectively was central to the Working Group's recommendations. OCLC Contract Cataloging for Publishers is another service that creates MARC records using publishers' electronic title data as a starting point. OCLC offers cataloging solutions for publishers and vendors that need to provide MARC records to libraries.

Reference and Discovery

OCLC and SWRLS Announce Collaboration Using WorldCat Local in the UK

OCLC and the South West Regional Library Service (SWRLS) today announced a collaboration that will initially see seven public library authorities in the South West of England using WorldCat Local as their shared end user discovery service in 2010. Library authorities in Bournemouth, Bath & NE Somerset, Bristol, North Somerset, Somerset, South Gloucestershire, and Plymouth are working with OCLC to implement a discovery interface that will enable users to search and place reservations on materials held across the South West region. The service is a replacement for Wisdom, formerly supplied by DS Ltd., now part of the Axiell Group. By adopting this approach, the libraries will also raise their profile on the Web by becoming visible in WorldCat.org, the Web destination for discovery of library resources. The libraries, through their participation in UnityUK, are already regularly updating their bibliographic and holdings information, which OCLC then uploads to WorldCat. This facilitated records transfer has opened up the potential for them to utilize services built on the WorldCat platform, including WorldCat Local. The seven SWRLS libraries will have their own individualized Web discovery interface reflecting their libraries' branding and holdings switched on. Each interface will also present real-time holdings information from the other participating libraries to quicken the time it takes for users to locate items of interest. Requests will then be managed by the libraries' underlying management systems, in this case Axiell's Galaxy and Talis Alto. Inter-library loan requests by SWRLS libraries are managed by UnityUK. The decision by libraries in the South West to adopt WorldCat Local as a shared service comes at a time when public libraries across the country are joining up service provision. In September 2009, the Society of Chief Librarians announced an initiative to allow members of a library to borrow books from any of 4000 libraries in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. And, as has been widely reported, the government is planning a national request service backed up by home delivery in an attempt to reinvigorate the public's perception of libraries.

OAIster Records Available Through WorldCat.org, Ensuring Access to Resources

The University of Michigan and OCLC announced that they have successfully transferred the OAIster database to OCLC to ensure continued public access to open-archive collections, and to expand the visibility of these collections to millions of information seekers through OCLC services. OAIster records are now fully accessible through WorldCat.org, and will be included in WorldCat.org search results along with records from thousands of libraries worldwide that add their holdings to WorldCat. OCLC plans to release a freely accessible, discrete view of the OAIster records in January 2010 through a URL specific to OAIster. OAIster records will also continue to be available on the OCLC FirstSearch service to Base Package subscribers, providing another valuable access point for this rich database and a complement to other FirstSearch databases. OCLC will continue to develop and enhance access to open archive content. OAIster is a union catalog of digital resources hosted at the University of Michigan since 2002. Launched with grant support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, OAIster was developed to test the feasibility of building a portal to open archive collections using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). OAIster has grown to become one of the world's largest aggregations of records pointing to open archive collections with more than 23 million records contributed by over 1,100 organizations worldwide. OCLC plans to release a freely accessible, discrete view of the OAIster database in 2010 that will be updated regularly. This will allow WorldCat.org searchers to view only items harvested through OAIster. Now that all OAIster records are accessible through WorldCat.org, the oaister.org Web site has been redirected to a new OAIster Web site at OCLC. For more information, visit the new OAIster Web site.

Syndetic Solutions Trial in WorldCat Local

OCLC is partnering with Syndetic Solutions to offer trial access to evaluative content such as covert art, reviews, and summaries in WorldCat Local. When enabled, this content will help WorldCat Local users more easily determine which items in search results will fulfill their research needs. All WorldCat Local libraries in North America (Canada, US, Mexico) Central America, Caribbean, and South America that do not currently purchase content from Syndetic Solutions are eligible to participate in the trial that will continue through June 30, 2010. Library staff members control access to the trial content in the >My WorldCat.org >User Interface Options section of the Service Configuration module. The new evaluative content is available now in WorldCat Local, but it will not display to users until the option to “Display Syndetics data?” is set to “Show” in Service Configuration. The trial will surface six new evaluative content elements within the WorldCat Local interface. These elements include:

• Cover Art
• Reviews from Library Journal
• Reviews from Publisher's Weekly
• First Chapters
• Descriptions/Summaries
• Table of Contents

For the purpose of this trial program, Syndetic Solutions has chosen to feature the six key content elements listed above. At the conclusion of the trial libraries may choose subscribe to these existing elements or add additional elements that include: fiction profiles, find similar titles, series list, first chapters, author notes, awards, Spanish and German content, video & music profiles, and reviews from School Library Journal , Booklist , Choice , Horn , and Kirkus . The trial of Syndetic Solutions evaluative content in WorldCat Local will continue through June 30, 2010. Following the trial, WorldCat Local libraries may choose to add a subscription to this content to their WorldCat Local subscription for an additional charge.

Management Services and Systems

Interdisciplinary Studies Enhancement to WorldCat Collection Analysis

One of the most requested enhancements, the ability to assess interdisciplinary studies across a collection, is now available in WorldCat Collection Analysis. Libraries are faced with the challenges of creating collections that cut across several subject areas and fields of study. Assessing the strengths and weaknesses of these collections is difficult. Classification systems do not treat these disciplines as a single subject, and interdisciplinary studies areas cross multiple subjects and call number areas. Now WorldCat Collection Analysis gives librarians the ability to assess their collections across areas of study, and compare their collection with their peers. Some examples of interdisciplinary studies include:

• African American Studies combining literature, history, politics, religion, sociology, and so on.
• Area studies Middle Eastern studies, East Asian studies.
• Biomedical Informatics combining computer science, information science, informatics, cognitive science, human-computer interaction, biomedical science, medicine, healthcare.
• Childhood studies anthropology, economics, history, sociology, literature, religion, fine arts, and psychology.
• Religious studies anthropology, sociology, psychology, philosophy, history of religion, and theology.

And there are many other areas where new fields of study encompass multiple subject areas throughout the collection. The interdisciplinary studies enhancement helps libraries:

• Define their own unique interdisciplinary studies areas, since one library area of study may not match another library area of study.
• Easily navigate through the OCLC Conspectus and traditional classification schemes to identify titles in multiple subject areas.
• Compare their interdisciplinary studies collection with peer libraries offering similar curriculum to identify overlaps and gaps.

Now librarians can limit an analysis by Category and/or Subject in addition to Division. Library staff can also name and save their Subject Profiles and have them available for use in the future.

Web and Data Services

WorldCat Search API Enhanced

The WorldCat Search API has been enhanced so that now developers can build apps that limit by an individual library's holding symbol, without authentication, at all service levels. With this functionality update, the eligibility requirements for the WorldCat Search API have also been updated. New applications for the service will require that the library contributes to WorldCat and subscribes to WorldCat on FirstSearch or maintains a WorldCat subscription. All of the more than 200 current WorldCat Search API WSKeys will remain active through at least Sept. 1, 2010. Any future request, however, will need to meet these new eligibility requirements.

A New API for All: WorldCat Basic

OCLC announces its plans to offer a simple API into WorldCat for anyone and everyone in the world to use, for noncommercial use. Called the WorldCat Basic API, it will provide a mashable access point for lightweight apps built by developers who may or may not have ties to the library community. Planned for release in late 2009, the WorldCat Basic API will use OpenSearch technology and return feeds in Atom and RSS. Results include OCLC number links to WorldCat.org, ISBNs and formatted citations. Developers everywhere are encouraged to exercise their creativity to create new mash-ups that make use of WorldCat data through the APIs and other WorldCat widgets. OCLC Web Services continue to offer ways to connect people with knowledge through libraries, and for libraries to reap the benefits of library cooperation.

WebJunction

IMLS Grant Will Help Libraries Help the Unemployed

Job seekers have packed libraries around the country during recent months, searching online job sites, building resumes, taking interview classes, and making use of a wide range of other employment services and resources. More help is on the way. Through a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), WebJunction, the online learning community for library staff created by OCLC, a nonprofit library service and research organization; and the State Library of North Carolina (SLNC) have launched a one-year initiative to gather and share best practices for providing library-based employment services and programs to the unemployed. The partners will develop and host an online training module - available to everyone - that adapts the workshop curriculum and experience. A core feature of the program will be online conversations at webjunction.org for state library administrators to explore new ideas for supporting local public library staff to deliver workforce services. All regional workshops and the online training module will be supported by follow-on programming. This will provide participants with the resources and support they need to assist local public libraries as they respond to urgent patron demands. Project goals include dissemination of services, programs, and partnerships to support the unemployed; greater capacity in state library agencies to support their local public libraries; and broader understanding and support outside the library field for the workforce development role that libraries have in responding to the crisis. Additional IMLS resources: Libraries to the Rescue is a set of five podcasts, including one by Mary L. Boone, State Librarian of North Carolina, that focuses on how libraries are helping citizens access all types of employment assistance. A list of Online Resources for Libraries and Jobseekers is available at www.imls.gov/news/2009/062409_list.shtm .

OCLC Research

OCLC Research Releases Annual Highlights Publication

OCLC Research Annual Highlights: Progress in Support of the RLG Partnership, July 2008–June 2009 is a 13-page report summarizing the activities, projects, publications, meetings, and events produced over the last year in support of the RLG Partnership. OCLC Research and staff from RLG partner institutions worked in the areas of research information management, mobilizing unique materials, metadata support and management, and system-wide organization. The report may be found on the OCLC Web site.