WorldCat, the world's most comprehensive database of information about library collections, recently celebrated the 45th anniversary of its launch.
On August 26, 1971, the OCLC Online Union Catalog (now known as WorldCat) began operation. From a single terminal, cataloguers at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, were able to catalogue 133 books online that day. Today, WorldCat comprises more than 380 million records representing more than 2.4 billion titles in libraries worldwide.
Since 1971, 380 million records have been added to WorldCat, spanning more than 5,000 years of recorded knowledge. This unique collection of information encompasses records in a variety of formats—books, e-books, DVDs, digital resources, serials, sound recordings, musical scores, maps, visual materials, mixed materials, computer files and more.
Libraries cooperatively contribute, enhance and share bibliographic data through WorldCat, connecting people to cultural and scholarly resources in libraries worldwide. Each record in the WorldCat database contains a bibliographic description of a single title or work and a list of institutions that hold the item. Institutions share these records, using them to create local catalogues, arrange interlibrary loans and conduct reference work. Libraries contribute records for titles not found in WorldCat using OCLC shared cataloguing systems.
When libraries share their data through WorldCat, they support a variety of network services, such as global resource sharing, collection evaluation and collection management.
WorldCat gives people the ability to view library collections from anywhere in the world, giving them access to a rich assortment of information much deeper than what can be found through a basic internet search. There are 491 languages and dialects represented in WorldCat, and 62 percent of records are in languages other than English.
WorldCat makes it possible for libraries to share data and improve the visibility and accessibility of library resources where users begin their searches. Once records have been added to WorldCat, they can be discovered on the Web through popular websites and through WorldCat.org.
Brought to you by Scope e-Knowledge Center, a world-leading provider of metadata services, abstraction, indexing, entity extraction and knowledge organisation models (Taxonomies, Thesauri and Ontologies).
