[WEB4LIB] RE: Yahoo-OCLC toolbar

[Andrew Mutch]

Karen,

> Last night I also pondered the issue of whether this was in a sense forcing
> libraries to go into OCLC. We know that OCLC isn't the known world. I know
> many libraries that participate partially, and do not have their holdings in
> OCLC. But if the expectation is that Yahoo shows us what a library has...
> well, I can see the library board meeting now. You can read this as
> criticism... or you can read it as the writing on the wall. Or the board
> minutes, chuckle chuckle. "The library director responded that she would
> look into this..." Thoughts there?

It's a good heads-up. As I was playing around with this yesterday, I realized
that it doesn't appear that our library has specific holdings in WorldCat.
Fortunately, someone at the coop level has been staying ahead of the wave and
their holdings in WorldCat are linked to the specific item records which then
gets a patron a listing of all holdings in the shared system including our own.
But it would be much better to get patrons directly to our own holdings. So
that's something to explore. As you might guess, this definitely isn't my area
of expertise and some of you more familiar with the ways of WorldCat and OCLC
are probably quietly laughing to yourself, thinking "boy, he doesn't know what
he's getting into asking THOSE questions". But I'll ask before the patrons start
asking and I'm expected to know the answer.

Andrew Mutch
Library Systems Technician
Waterford Township Public Library