John Chapman: November 2009 Archives
This fall, OCLC has been involved in loading records from major European collections from Denmark and France.
OCLC is working to make available in WorldCat the records and location information of the Danish National Union Catalogue (DANBIB) (see the February 2009 announcement at http://www.oclc.org/enews/2009/08/en_denmark.htm). OCLC's agreement with the Dansk BiblioteksCenter (DBC) was the result of a year-long pilot coordinated with the Danish Agency for Libraries and Media (DALM). The pilot took place with the participation of academic and public libraries from across Denmark. When the loading into WorldCat is done, there will be approximately 10 million DANBIB records represented in WorldCat.
There have been two major projects with French metadata. The first is bringing approximately 15 million records from the Bibliothèque nationale de France. (BnF). This project, announced in June 2009 (http://www.oclc.org/us/en/news/releases/200936.htm) has an extra layer of complexity due to the native INTERMARC format of the records; a conversion to MARC21 has been going well and records are already appearing in WorldCat. OCLC is excited to continue working with BnF, who have previously provided assistance with the Virtual International Authority File (a.k.a.VIAF, Fichier d'Autorité International Virtuel).
The second French-language project is that of ABES (l'Agence Bibliographique de l'Enseignement Supérieur), an association of French academic libraries, bringing 8 million records to WorldCat. This project (announced in September 2009 at http://www.oclc.org/us/en/news/releases/200949.htm) builds on a long relationship with ABES. Their cataloguing system, Système Universitaire de documentation (Sudoc) is based on OCLC's Central Bibliographic System (CBS). As the September press release mentions, "Loading CBS records into WorldCat makes possible the option for real-time updates from CBS into WorldCat, via SRU update, which is currently being used effectively for the Dutch union catalogue and the union catalogue of Australia."
Both ABES and Denmark are also working with OCLC on loads of library data to WorldCat Registry, a web-based directory of libraries worldwide. (See previous Metalogue post: http://community.oclc.org/metalogue/archives/2008/10/cataloging-ourselves.html)The Registry comprehensiveness for French and Danish libraries will be greatly improved by this cooperation for inclusion of local catalog linking and other institutional data.
OCLC has many other current agreements with national libraries and other organizations. Notable among them are:
Look for more news on these last two projects in early 2010. In the meantime, you can also watch WorldCat grow at http://www.oclc.org/worldcat/newgrow.htm. We are honored to be working with these partners on enhancing the visibility and utility of their metadata.
OCLC is working to make available in WorldCat the records and location information of the Danish National Union Catalogue (DANBIB) (see the February 2009 announcement at http://www.oclc.org/enews/2009/08/en_denmark.htm). OCLC's agreement with the Dansk BiblioteksCenter (DBC) was the result of a year-long pilot coordinated with the Danish Agency for Libraries and Media (DALM). The pilot took place with the participation of academic and public libraries from across Denmark. When the loading into WorldCat is done, there will be approximately 10 million DANBIB records represented in WorldCat.
There have been two major projects with French metadata. The first is bringing approximately 15 million records from the Bibliothèque nationale de France. (BnF). This project, announced in June 2009 (http://www.oclc.org/us/en/news/releases/200936.htm) has an extra layer of complexity due to the native INTERMARC format of the records; a conversion to MARC21 has been going well and records are already appearing in WorldCat. OCLC is excited to continue working with BnF, who have previously provided assistance with the Virtual International Authority File (a.k.a.VIAF, Fichier d'Autorité International Virtuel).
The second French-language project is that of ABES (l'Agence Bibliographique de l'Enseignement Supérieur), an association of French academic libraries, bringing 8 million records to WorldCat. This project (announced in September 2009 at http://www.oclc.org/us/en/news/releases/200949.htm) builds on a long relationship with ABES. Their cataloguing system, Système Universitaire de documentation (Sudoc) is based on OCLC's Central Bibliographic System (CBS). As the September press release mentions, "Loading CBS records into WorldCat makes possible the option for real-time updates from CBS into WorldCat, via SRU update, which is currently being used effectively for the Dutch union catalogue and the union catalogue of Australia."
Both ABES and Denmark are also working with OCLC on loads of library data to WorldCat Registry, a web-based directory of libraries worldwide. (See previous Metalogue post: http://community.oclc.org/metalogue/archives/2008/10/cataloging-ourselves.html)The Registry comprehensiveness for French and Danish libraries will be greatly improved by this cooperation for inclusion of local catalog linking and other institutional data.
OCLC has many other current agreements with national libraries and other organizations. Notable among them are:
- the Slovenian COBISS.SI catalog of over 3 million records, representing the collections of over 380 libraries. Completed in October, the load of 3,129,554 records resulted in 3,063,840 records (and 4,309,068 holdings) being added - an extraordinary ratio.
- five consortia of the Swiss Informationsverbund Deutschschweiz (IDS), loading 10 million bibliographic and 16 million holdings records from Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Luxembourg library systems. This project is underway.
- the Israel consortium MALMAD, representing 30 academic institutions. This is also underway.
Look for more news on these last two projects in early 2010. In the meantime, you can also watch WorldCat grow at http://www.oclc.org/worldcat/newgrow.htm. We are honored to be working with these partners on enhancing the visibility and utility of their metadata.
