So, I know most of you have heard the words Open WorldCat batted around. We had an OCLC representative visit today and I finally learned the difference between Open WorldCat and WorldCat.org! Given that it's the holidays and my brain checked out a couple of days ago, I was pretty surprised to get this new tidbit of info today!
To make this as concise as possible. Open WorldCat is a project started to allow Google, Yahoo and Amazon (as well as other partners) users to see library holdings. So, when you do searches in Google, you'll sometimes run across a library's record and you'll have the option to go out to that library's site and request the item. What you should know, though, is that only about 8 million of the 70+ million records from OCLC WorldCat are actually available in this format.
This brings me to WorldCat.org. WorldCat.org actually includes ALL OCLC holdings. They even break it out by media type. It's actually a pretty nice search interface.
Now that you know the difference, what does this mean for you? It means, don't worry too much about Open WorldCat. You will run across these links occassionally when searching Google and Yahoo. This is a great thing for libraries in general because all those folks who think they can find everything in Google will soon start to see lots of links to library resources. Great press for all of us! You should, however, visit Worldcat.org. You can search some libraries in the state here but don't depend on this as a collection development or ILL tool. Most SC libraries are not here. If you are fairly certain that an item is not in the state, though, it's a great place to search and see who might have it in a neighboring state. In addition, there is an option to add the worldcat.org search box to your website. There is also a new option to add pre-defined WorldCat searches to your site. So, check it out at www.worldcat.org. You can also get a lot more information about this tool by clicking on the learn more link on the front page.
Happy holidays everyone!
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