Global library cooperative Online Computer Library Center, Inc. (OCLC), US, and the National Library of Israel have completed a pilot project that has resulted in the addition of more than 788,000 new bibliographic records and 1.1 million holdings from the national library to WorldCat. WorldCat is one of the world's largest online resources for finding information in libraries.
The National Library of Israel worked with OCLC in the pilot project to explore and resolve issues in adding records containing only non-Latin script data to WorldCat. Most of the new records added to WorldCat represent materials in Hebrew script, but significant numbers of records represent Arabic-script and Cyrillic-script publications. The National Library of Israel will continue to add records to WorldCat as new materials are catalogued. Records from the National Library of Israel are now visible to web searchers through WorldCat.org.
Israeli libraries started participating in the OCLC cooperative in 1989. Today there are 71 institutions in Israel actively participating in OCLC. By adding these records to WorldCat, the National Library of Israel becomes a governing member of OCLC and will participate in governance of the worldwide cooperative.
The WorldCat database continues to grow at an extraordinary rate, with many of the records entered into the world's largest bibliographic resource coming from outside the US. Between July 1, 2007 and June 30, 2008, records from the National Library of Sweden, Swiss National Library, National Library of Australia and National Library of New Zealand were added to WorldCat.
