Tag Archives: books

WorldCat database reaches 2 billion holdings

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“World­Cat is a data­base of bib­li­o­graphic infor­ma­tion cre­ated and con­tin­u­ously updated by some 25,000 OCLC mem­ber libraries around the world. World­Cat records describe spe­cific works and con­tain a list­ing of insti­tu­tions that own an item, referred to as “hold­ings.” Insti­tu­tions use hold­ings infor­ma­tion to cre­ate local cat­a­logs, arrange inter­li­brary loans and con­duct ref­er­ence work.”

“World­Cat was cre­ated in 1971 so that libraries could share cat­a­loging infor­ma­tion from a cen­tral data­base, increas­ing work­flow effi­ciency and the abil­ity to locate and loan mate­ri­als. It took the OCLC coop­er­a­tive almost 34 years, from August 26, 1971 to August 11, 2005, to add 1 bil­lion hold­ings in World­Cat. It has taken just seven years and eight months to add the next billion.” 

“World­Cat spans six mil­len­nia of recorded knowl­edge, from about 4800 B.C. to the present. It encom­passes records for books, seri­als, sound record­ings, musi­cal scores, maps, visual mate­ri­als, mixed mate­ri­als and com­puter files.”

From OCLC Mem­ber Update [oclc@oclc.org]

“Find more about World­Cat on the OCLC web­site, and watch World­Cat grow as libraries around the world con­tribute to the database.”

(Hold­ings con­sti­tute a higher num­ber than titles.  A(nother) hold­ing is counted for each library that owns a title.

American Mathematical Society Books Online

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Amer­i­can Math­e­mat­i­cal Soci­ety Books Online [pdf]

“The Amer­i­can Math­e­mat­i­cal Soci­ety (AMS) was founded in 1888 in order to fur­ther math­e­mat­i­cal research and schol­ar­ship. Since that time, they have embarked on a num­ber of out­reach pro­grams designed to edu­cate the pub­lic about the impor­tance of var­i­ous math­e­mat­i­cal endeav­ors. In the past sev­eral years, they have been devel­op­ing the AMS Books Online web­site, and it’s quite a resource. The works were all orig­i­nally pub­lished by the AMS, and they can be browsed by author or sub­ject. The sub­ject head­ings include analy­sis, gen­eral inter­est, logic and foun­da­tions, and num­ber the­ory. Users can down­load indi­vid­ual chap­ters from each book, and there are cur­rently over thirty books avail­able on the site. Vis­i­tors should make sure and check back, as there are plans to add books to the site periodically.”

Source:  The Scout Report from the Univ. of Wis­con­sin, Feb. 19, 2010

WorldCat, world’s largest book catalog, now lists JSTOR articles!

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“JSTOR now indexed in WorldCat.org — 18 Jan 2010

Authen­ti­cated schol­ars and researchers with online access to full-text con­tent in JSTOR can now locate and con­nect to arti­cles through WorldCat.org. JSTOR is a preser­va­tion archive and research plat­form for the aca­d­e­mic community.

Over 4.5 mil­lion JSTOR article-level records from more than 1,000 jour­nals, selected mono­graphs, and other schol­arly con­tent are now indexed in WorldCat.org, the Web des­ti­na­tion for dis­cov­ery of mate­ri­als in libraries world­wide. JSTOR records are deliv­ered in WorldCat.org search results. Schol­ars and researchers using WorldCat.org can now iden­tify con­tent in JSTOR and con­nect to the full-text using the autho­ri­sa­tion pro­vided by their library.

WorldCat.org is a Web des­ti­na­tion with search and social net­work­ing fea­tures that allow infor­ma­tion seek­ers to dis­cover, localise, and per­son­alise con­tent from local col­lec­tions and those of more than 10,000 World­Cat libraries world­wide. WorldCat.org index­ing of JSTOR meta­data helps researchers eas­ily iden­tify resources in the col­lec­tion along­side other mate­ri­als rel­e­vant to their work. An autho­riza­tion is required for access to full-text mate­ri­als in JSTOR.

World­Cat claims to be the world’s largest data­base of bib­li­o­graphic infor­ma­tion built con­tin­u­ously by libraries around the world since 1971. Each record in the World­Cat data­base con­tains a bib­li­o­graphic descrip­tion of a sin­gle item or work and a list of insti­tu­tions that hold the item. The insti­tu­tions share these records, using them to cre­ate local cat­a­logs, arrange inter­li­brary loans and con­duct ref­er­ence work. There are now more than 165 mil­lion records in World­Cat span­ning five mil­len­nia of recorded knowl­edge. Like the knowl­edge it describes, World­Cat grows steadily. Every sec­ond, OCLC and its mem­ber libraries add seven records to WorldCat.”

Source:  Knowl­edge­s­peak Newsletter.

Book barcodes can be scanned on iPhone with RedLaser app

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Scan a book bar­code with your iPhone, see if we have it

Now thanks to a pop­u­lar iPhone app called Red­Laser, you can scan a book bar­code and find our library results through WorldCat.org. The app shows results for our library and libraries nearby, when we have the item. Cur­rently library results for Red­Laser are for books only. Watch a 43 sec­ond YouTube video to see RedLaser’s library results in action, and then down­load the $1.99 app through Apple’s iTunes app store.

From today’s OCLC alert: NEW for WorldCat.org

Cornell University Library Historical Math Monographs Collection

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Cor­nell Uni­ver­sity Library His­tor­i­cal Math Mono­graphs Collection

http://digital.library.cornell.edu/m/math/

“The Cor­nell Uni­ver­sity Library His­tor­i­cal Math Mono­graphs Col­lec­tion has a rather inter­est­ing his­tory. The col­lec­tion began when a num­ber of brit­tle and decay­ing math mono­graphs were dig­i­tally scanned using equip­ment devel­oped by Cor­nell and the Xerox Cor­po­ra­tion. This col­lec­tion brings together all of those doc­u­ments, includ­ing a selec­tion of other rel­e­vant papers and schol­arly works. All told, there are over 1,000 works here, and vis­i­tors can use the “Browse” sec­tion to look over the offer­ings by title or author. Addi­tion­ally, vis­i­tors can per­form detailed searches across the entire col­lec­tion. Vis­i­tors should also take a look at the “Selected Titles” on the home­page to get a sense of what lies within this rather com­pelling col­lec­tion. Finally, there is a “Help” sec­tion that pro­vides some hints on mak­ing the best use of the site.”

Source:  The Scout Report from the Uni­ver­sity of Wis­con­sin, 27 Feb, 2009

Portico Archive now holds 10 million articles

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US Ten mil­lion jour­nal arti­cles pre­served within Por­tico archive — 06 Feb 2009

“Non-profit elec­tronic archiv­ing ser­vice provider Por­tico, US, has announced that more than 10 mil­lion jour­nal arti­cles are pre­served within the Por­tico archive. Launched in 2005 with sup­port from JSTOR, The Andrew W. Mel­lon Foun­da­tion, Ithaka, and the Library of Con­gress, Por­tico pro­vides a per­ma­nent archive of schol­arly lit­er­a­ture pub­lished in elec­tronic form.

The Por­tico archive is sup­ported by both pub­lish­ers and libraries and is increas­ingly cen­tral to the dig­i­tal preser­va­tion and per­ma­nent access strate­gies of insti­tu­tions around the world.

The growth of the archive under­scores the impor­tance of preser­va­tion archives in facil­i­tat­ing a secure tran­si­tion from print to elec­tronic col­lec­tions. At the close of 2008, 68 pub­lish­ers pro­duc­ing jour­nals and e-books on behalf of hun­dreds of schol­arly soci­eties par­tic­i­pated in Por­tico and have entrusted over 8,200 jour­nal titles and 4,600 e-books to the archive. Libraries from the global com­mu­nity have been equally sup­port­ive of Por­tico with nearly 500 cur­rent par­tic­i­pants from 13 countries.

Click here”

Source:  Knowl­edge­s­peak Newsletter

WorldCat Copyright Evidence Registry

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OCLC set to launch new ser­vice to dis­cover copy­right sta­tus of books
- 27 Aug 2008

Global library coop­er­a­tive Online Com­puter Library Cen­ter, Inc. (OCLC), US, has announced that it is pilot­ing a new ser­vice for libraries that encour­age librar­i­ans and other inter­ested par­ties to dis­cover and share infor­ma­tion on copy­right sta­tus of books.

The World­Cat Copy­right Evi­dence Reg­istry is a com­mu­nity work­ing together to build a union cat­a­logue of copy­right evi­dence based on World­Cat, which con­tains over 100 mil­lion bib­li­o­graphic records describ­ing items held in thou­sands of libraries world­wide. In addi­tion to the World­Cat meta­data, the Copy­right Evi­dence Reg­istry uses other data con­tributed by libraries and other organ­i­sa­tions. The new ser­vice seeks to encour­age a coop­er­a­tive envi­ron­ment to dis­cover, cre­ate and share copy­right evi­dence through a col­lab­o­ra­tively cre­ated and main­tained data­base, using the World­Cat coop­er­a­tive model to elim­i­nate dupli­cate efforts.

The Copy­right Evi­dence Reg­istry six-month pilot was launched July 1 to test the con­cept and func­tion­al­ity. Users can search the Copy­right Evi­dence Reg­istry to find infor­ma­tion about a book, learn what oth­ers have said about its copy­right sta­tus, and share what they know. Dur­ing a later stage of the pilot, OCLC will add a fea­ture enabling pilot libraries to cre­ate and run auto­mated copy­right rules con­form­ing to stan­dards they define for deter­min­ing copy­right sta­tus. The rules will help libraries analyse the infor­ma­tion avail­able in the Copy­right Evi­dence Reg­istry and form their own con­clu­sions about copy­right status.

The World­Cat Copy­right Evi­dence Reg­istry beta can be accessed at http://www.worldcat.org/copyrightevidence. OCLC has called for feed­backs on the Copy­right Evi­dence Reg­istry from the library com­mu­nity on the WorldCat.org web­site at http://www.worldcat.org/copyrightevidence/registry/feedback.

Click here

From today’s Knowl­edge­s­peak Newsletter.