[WEB4LIB] RE: Open WorldCat Pilot: A User's Perspective

[Teets,Mike]

Sorry all, that wasn't supposed to go to the list...

-----Original Message-----
From: web4lib at webjunction.org
[mailto:web4lib at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Teets,Mike
Sent: Friday, December 03, 2004 11:46 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: [WEB4LIB] RE: Open WorldCat Pilot: A User's Perspective

Yes, reply-all, delete the senders name, should be first... they will
get it through the list.  The default for reply is setup just to go to
the sender. 

-----Original Message-----
From: Nilges,Chip 
Sent: Friday, December 03, 2004 10:59 AM
To: Teets,Mike
Subject: RE: [WEB4LIB] RE: Open WorldCat Pilot: A User's Perspective

How do I post?  Reply to all?

-----Original Message-----
From: Teets,Mike 
Sent: Friday, December 03, 2004 10:58 AM
To: Nilges,Chip
Subject: RE: [WEB4LIB] RE: Open WorldCat Pilot: A User's Perspective


Yep... I was hoping you would :-)

-----Original Message-----
From: Nilges,Chip 
Sent: Friday, December 03, 2004 10:57 AM
To: Teets,Mike
Subject: FW: [WEB4LIB] RE: Open WorldCat Pilot: A User's Perspective

Let me field this one, okay?  

-----Original Message-----
From: web4lib at webjunction.org
[mailto:web4lib at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Laura Cohen
Sent: Friday, December 03, 2004 10:34 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: [WEB4LIB] RE: Open WorldCat Pilot: A User's Perspective


Chip and Mike:

Interesting posting. This leads me to a couple of questions about the
financial side of things.

1. Now that you've begun the process of handing over WorldCat to
successful businesses that will provide free access to its contents,
when will OCLC stop charging libraries (who of course provide this
content) for access to WorldCat through FirstSearch? 

2. What, if any, financial gain is OCLC receiving from its partnership
with Google, Yahoo and other partners? This would be of interest to
those of us following open access scholarship.

------------------------------------------
Laura B. Cohen
Library Web Administrator
LI-140 University at Albany
Albany, NY 12222
Tel:  (518) 442-3492  Fax: (518) 442-3567



Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2004 13:23:49 -0500
From: "Teets,Mike" <teetsm at oclc.org>
To: "Multiple recipients of list" <web4lib at webjunction.org>
Subject: RE: Open WorldCat Pilot: A User's Perspective
Message-ID:
<35A72025A61EE3488E4CF824C717F70EA607FB at OAEXCH1SERVER.oa.oclc.org>

Open WorldCat is a work in progress.  We launched the project almost one
year ago with a simple goal -- to help libraries make their collections
visible and available at the point of need on the open Web.  Since that
time, we've made a number of enhancements, some planned and others in
response to requests from the membership/library community.   

Some recent developments:

-  A few weeks ago, we posted the entire Worldcat collection of 57
million records for harvesting by the search engines. (Before then, only
2 million records were available for harvest.) Additional records will
begin appearing as the search engines incorporate them into their
systems.   

-  Earlier in November, we added hot linked subject headings that users
can follow to view a list of all items with the same subject heading in
Open WorldCat, in order to facilitate subject access to WorldCat.  

-  In December and January we will begin adding features to address the
issue addressed in the post below regarding grouping holdings for
multiple iterations/versions of an item.  These features will include
the ability to retrieve and see holdings for other items with the same
author & title and, possibly, hot-linked author and titles.  We are also
thinking about applications of XISBN, which returns a list of associated
ISBNs for a given ISBN, and the FRBR algorithm for reducing duplicate
records.  

- In the next few weeks, we will be providing a section of the Open
Worldcat informational page featuring user contributed "cool tools"
based on Open Worldcat.  It will be at the same location
http://www.oclc.org/worldcat/open/default.htm

-  On an ongoing basis, we are talking regularly with potential new
partners for Open WorldCat and are actively building our directories of
OPAC and OpenURL links, in an effort to improve the likelihood that user
who encounters Open WorldCat will be able to get to a local libraries
catalog or OpenURL resolver for service. (Any OCLC member library can
update their links at https://www3.oclc.org/app/openwc/ )  We are also
doing some manual creation of these links as time allows.

This has been a very interesting project for us at OCLC.  We hope that
it is providing the community with a valuable service, and that it is
also serving as a catalyst for further exploration of the huge potential
for collaboration that we believe exists between libraries and open Web
information sites.  We are very happy to see the interest the project
has generated, through discussion like this one, comments from users,
and the rapid growth in activity we've seen over the past few months.
Libraries obviously have a central role to play in public access to
information, and it is our job to help in any way that we can.  

Chip Nilges, nilgesc at oclc.org
Executive Director, WorldCat Content & Global Access

Mike Teets, teetsm at oclc.org
Executive Director, Product Architecture and Development

------------------------------------------
Laura B. Cohen
Library Web Administrator
LI-140 University at Albany
Albany, NY 12222
Tel:  (518) 442-3492  Fax: (518) 442-3567