Library cooperative OCLC has announced that repository managers from libraries, museums, archives and other cultural heritage and research institutions can now contribute metadata records for digital materials to WorldCat using the enhanced WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway. The tool is projected to increase the visibility and accessibility of special collections, institutional repositories and other digital content to web searchers worldwide.
In July 2009, OCLC had introduced the WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway to users of OCLC CONTENT Digital Collection Management software. Based on the OAI protocol, the Gateway enabled CONTENT users to upload the metadata of their digital collections to WorldCat. Recent enhancements to the Gateway now make it possible for any OAI-compliant repository to contribute metadata to WorldCat to gain broader visibility for their digital content.
The enhanced WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway is freely available to institutions interested in increasing the visibility of their digital content through WorldCat. Visibility is increased through WorldCat.org, a web destination for discovery of collections, and also through partnerships with Google, Yahoo! and a growing library developer network.
Designed for self-service use, the WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway is a web-based tool that enables repository managers to customise how their metadata displays in WorldCat.org and determine their metadata harvesting schedule - monthly, quarterly, semi-annually or annually. Additionally, it applies their institution's "holdings symbol" to their records, thereby highlighting the unique information resources their institution is contributing to WorldCat.
There are more than 25 million metadata records for digital items currently accessible through WorldCat.org, most of which were contributed as part of OAIster, a union catalogue of records representing open archive resources from around the world. The number of digital records in WorldCat and their use is stated to be growing. Since 2006, there have been more than 600 million visits to WorldCat.org and more than 36 million click-throughs to libraries. With WorldCat.org, users are said to be only three clicks away from an institution's digital content.
To date, more than a half million metadata records have been entered into WorldCat through the WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway. A record for a thesis titled 'The Implementation and Impact of Data Mining', from Taiwan's National Chengchi University's library, marks the 500,000th record entered into WorldCat using the WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway. The University's library staff is harvesting the metadata from its theses and dissertations collections and its institutional repository into WorldCat to help increase the visibility of their collections worldwide.
Search for more Digital Repositories
Get customisable STM news alerts in your Mobile. Visit http://www.scopeknowledge.com/scoope.jar via your mobile browser to download the SCOOPE application
