All of OCLC's WorldCat Heading Toward the Open Web

(Via LISNews) InfoToday reports that OCLC has decided to open its WorldCat database, a collection of the 53.3 million items of connected to 928.6 million library holdings, for harvesting by Google and Yahoo.

Currently, the Open WorldCat subset database contains about 2 million records, all items held by 100 or more academic, public, or school libraries -- some 12,000 libraries all told. The new upgraded Open WorldCat program will automatically include all of the 15,000-plus OCLC libraries that contribute ownership information (holdings) to WorldCat, unless the library asks to have its holdings excluded. In January 2005, Open WorldCat will officially graduate from a pilot program to a permanent "ongoing program"; however, the database will be open for "harvesting" to Google and Yahoo! Search as early as late November 2004. During a transition period extending through June 2005, all libraries with holdings in WorldCat will participate in the Web search engine referrals. Starting in July 2005, libraries participating in Open WorldCat must have subscriptions in place to OCLC’s FirstSearch WorldCat or OCLC will remove their holdings from Open WorldCat reports.

Posted by Tom on October 13, 2004 | TrackBack (0)