OCLC Breakfast Update at ALA 2008

OCLC president Jay Jordan gave an extensive overview of OCLC new products and services at the annual ALA OCLC breakfast update. Here is an overview of his presentation:

A new publication titled From awareness to funding: a study of library support for America is now available for download or ordering www.oclc.org/reports/funding

A new NetLibrary Media Center described as a free enhancement to the NetLibrary eAudiobook platform was recently launched. This Media Center offers enhanced searching, single click checkout and the ability to download to a portable device. http://www.oclc.org/audiobooks/default.htm

A project is underway at OCLC to control all personal name headings (over 26 million) in WorldCat bibliographic records. This project when completed will result in bibliographic records being updated automatically if the heading in the authority record changes. More information available at: http://outgoing.typepad.com/outgoing/2008/04/controlling-nam.html

WorldCat Identities http://orlabs.oclc.org/Identities/ is a recently concluded project where OCLC created a summary/biographical page for every personal name found in bibliographic records in WorldCat in a user friendly interface. Users of this graphical interface can view all the works written by an author , works written about the author, a graphical timeline showing their publication history, list all the languages in which the author’s works were published in, view cross referenced names found in the author’s authority record, and view the associated subject headings of all published works (viewed as a clickable cloud tag)

WorldCat xISSN http://www.oclc.org/xissn/default.htm is a new Web service that supports management of serials information. Users can supply an ISSN to find out about title changes, and find the electronic ISSN for a print title or vice versa. xISSN is available at no charge to OCLC cataloging members.

After success pilot projects at the University of Washington http://www.lib.washington.edu/ and the State Library of Ohio http://winslo.state.oh.us/, OCLC has launched WorldCat Local as a purchased product available to libraries www.oclc.org/worldcatlocal. WorldCat local offers the same features as WorldCat.org but with the added advantage of searching library resources at three tiers locally (all library resources in its collection), through a consortia (e.g. OhioLink Libraries) or globally (all WorldCat Libraries). Some key features include:
--single search box to all local library resources (print, AV, electronic, digital) as well as resources available globally via WorldCat Libraries. This search box is customizable for branding with library’s logo.
-- relevancy ranking of search results
-- results that bring multiple versions of a work together
-- faceted browse capability
-- citation (APA, Chicago, MLA, Turabian, Harvard) formatting options
-- cover art
-- patron added reviews, ratings, and personalized lists
--interoperability with a library’s circulation system to deliver location and availability information compliant with OpenURL resolvers, thus providing access to content available via multiple vendors and fulfilling ILL requests
--Link to Google Book Search. Users can immediately link to Google Book Search http://books.google.com/ and read the full text or snippets of text for the title initially searched in WorldCat Local.