Talk:WorldCat

This article is written in American English, which has its own spelling conventions (color, defense, traveled) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the WorldCat article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Libraries High‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Libraries, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Libraries on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.LibrariesWikipedia:WikiProject LibrariesTemplate:WikiProject LibrariesLibraries articles
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

Organizations

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Organizations, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Organizations on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.OrganizationsWikipedia:WikiProject OrganizationsTemplate:WikiProject Organizationsorganization articles
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.

Websites: Computing

	This article is part of WikiProject Websites, an attempt to create and link together articles about the major websites on the web. To participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page.WebsitesWikipedia:WikiProject WebsitesTemplate:WikiProject WebsitesWebsites articles
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the importance scale.
	This article is supported by WikiProject Computing.

Databases (inactive)

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Databases, a project which is currently considered to be inactive.DatabasesWikipedia:WikiProject DatabasesTemplate:WikiProject DatabasesDatabases articles

Bibliographies High‑importance

	Books portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Bibliographies, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Bibliographies on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.BibliographiesWikipedia:WikiProject BibliographiesTemplate:WikiProject BibliographiesBibliographies articles
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the importance scale.

WorldCat Identities

There is a proposed project to systematically link from Wikipedia biographical articles to WorldCat Identities: those interested are invited to sign up at the project proposal page! Dsp13 15:29, 20 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

OCLC's website describes WorldCat as "a worldwide union catalog created and maintained collectively by 9,031 institutions" ([1] accessed on 10/26/2007). This figure differs greatly from 50,000+ libraries listed in the first paragraph of this article. Where did the 50,000 number come from? Is this a mistake, or an issue of semantics? Either way something needs to be changed to avoid confusion. 71.161.142.66 02:08, 27 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

each institute has five libraries? sounds like a high figure to me Mathmo ^Talk 01:30, 14 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I can't speak for other institutions, but I work at UC Davis where we actually have six different libraries: Medical (at UCD Med Center in Sacramento); Law; Health Sciences; Physical Sciences & Engineering; Agricultural and Resource Economics; and finally Peter J. Shields (general/main) Library (last 5 all on UC Davis campus). Jrv (talk) 22:01, 18 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The above proposed project is now archived at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Archive 2#WorldCat Identities - external links, with the last comment a suggestion it be a task force of Wikipedia:WikiProject Microformats, but a search of the archives there find no mention. -84user (talk) 13:44, 24 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Not purchased?

What exactly does "WorldCat itself is not directly purchased by libraries" mean? Does it mean some basic version of WorldCat is free to libraries, or does it mean libraries must purchase WorldCat, but through a reseller? Superm401 - Talk 01:43, 2 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

After being a contractor at OCLC, I'll try take a stab at this question, even though this answer is not timely in the slightest. A library doesn't have to purchase access to the website WorldCat. However there are paid services that OCLC sells, like keeping track of a library's holdings, synchronizing their card catalog with the OCLC database, etc. Those services aren't free but they do impact the database that powers the WorldCat website. However, once a library's data is in the system, it's available to the public, which also includes other libraries.

The other thought the author may have been considering is the fact that OCLC is basically owned and paid for by libraries. It's not a system of stocks but it's similar. -Legaia (talk) 17:48, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for sharing your insight. I tried to clarify this a bit in the article. Superm401 - Talk 03:22, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Advert style

I fixed the language of the article and shortened it, fewer sections. Mercurywoodrose (talk) 16:36, 28 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Worldcat shows private library holdings when accessed from a university library, but not from elsewhere?

I know talk pages aren't normally for questions about the subject of an article, but if we can get a source for this it would make a good addition to the article. I've noticed that when searching Worldcat for a book from a university library computer, it shows (in gray) holdings at many private libraries, such as R&D firms and museums, which I've never seen when accessing Worldcat from anyplace else.

Is this some special feature that's only provided to educational or library users, or is there some special option under advanced search that enables this? Squidfryerchef (talk) 19:54, 12 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure. I know those holdings have always been in WorldCat for many years but it's only when you pointed it out now that I realized they don't show private libraries in Open WorldCat. My assumption (but I can't prove it) is that private libraries don't want to be bothered by ordinary laypersons looking for books anyway, so that's why OCLC didn't add them to Open WorldCat. Keep in mind that WorldCat was originally intended for experienced librarians and academic researchers (who would know how to use interlibrary loan to get books or copies of relevant portions thereof out of private libraries) and Open WorldCat is a radical new direction for OCLC. It means that libraries can help everyone find rare books more quickly. But it also means that a lot of academic libraries are getting a lot more inquiries from a larger user population than their traditional core user populations! --Coolcaesar (talk) 05:49, 13 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I know the worldcat.org website is a recent development but that's exactly what I'm seeing this on. I'm talking about literally walking up to a PC in a library and opening up a web browser, not a special library database. I don't seem to be logged into Worldcat in any sense, but the results are very different than when connecting from a non-.edu domain. Squidfryerchef (talk) 16:10, 13 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

List of libraries

Is there a way to find a list of all the libraries that are part of Worldcat? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 161.185.130.11 (talk) 20:37, 11 January 2010 (UTC) That would be the database of OCLC members, which is here. Note that WorldCat Registry, mentioned on that page, is a separate service apart from the list of members. --Coolcaesar (talk) 07:07, 12 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Other aggregators

Worth noting, I think, that there are other catalog-aggregators whose contents overlap with, but are not contained in, the contents of the library catalogs which together make up Worldcat (I should put it that way, since not everything in every library that's scanned by Worldcat is found by Worldcat; the Library of Congress is only partially in Worldcat, but has an "old catalog" section- a very large one- that's part of its electronic catalog but has to be viewed at its own website at loc.gov rather than seen aggregated with the rest of the LoC catalog at Worldcat. Etc.) Anyway, there's also the KVK system of collected German library catalogs ; the OPAC Catalogo SBN ; the catalogs of the Austrian National Library (which include the Sammlungen catalogs which are not generally included in Worldcat - e.g. the HANNA catalog of music publications and materials- a huge collection of information about (mostly Austrian, probably) compositions and correspondence by composers (probably hundreds more entries for some people who only have dozens outside HANNA, just to give an example :) ) - so e.g. HANNA...) - and etc. etc. - looking in national libraries in other countries (as a rule, there's a list one can prepare of such things to look at - national European libraries e.g. Budapest, Scandinavian, Prague, RSL @ Moscow etc. etc. etc. - to look through - when WorldCat is unhelpful in one's searches.) Schissel | Sound the Note! 11:06, 23 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Merge with OCLC page?

It seems like this page should and/or could be merged with the main OCLC page. Anyone have thoughts or opinions on this? See OCLC#Online_database:_WorldCat -- Erika BrillLyle (talk) 00:58, 2 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Seems like a good idea to me. --Randykitty (talk) 07:21, 2 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Deletion of template

Randykitty (talk) - saw you deleted the addition of the OCLC template link from the See also section here. It seems like an important GLAM-Wiki tool to add to this article. If not in the See also section, do you have any suggestions on ways to possibly highlight the template? It seems like it would be a helpful addition to the page, would let editors know the tool is available and how it works with the WorldCat interface. BrillLyle (talk) 11:42, 2 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Mainspace articles are not to help editors, they exist for the readers... --Randykitty (talk) 12:18, 2 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Why do some libraries adhere to Worldcat and others don't?

Everything is in the subject. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Coulonnus (talk • contribs) 13:35, 18 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Coulonnus: Talk pages are not a forum for general discussion of the article subject; they are for discussing how to improve the article. It's also not clear what you mean by "adhere to". If you want to know why libraries participate in the OCLC cooperative, you can learn all about that from OCLC. If you want to know why libraries don't participate, see "An environmental scan of OCLC alternatives: a management perspective", listed in the "Further reading" section, for some reasons. Biogeographist (talk) 01:48, 19 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Screenshot

@Moonrivers: Thanks for adding a screenshot in your recent edit, but the second version that you uploaded seems way too long vertically. I've never before seen an infobox screenshot that is so long vertically; can you point to other examples on Wikipedia that are a precedent? If not, could we go back to the more compact horizontal version? Most people do not have a screen with such an extremely vertical aspect ratio. Biogeographist (talk) 01:04, 26 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Biogeographist: I have revered back to previous version as suggested. Thanks. Moonrivers (talk) 17:49, 27 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Recent edit about Open Library

@Nemo bis: I reverted this edit because I couldn't see any connection between WorldCat and Open Library in the cited source, "Bookscanning Launch and Vision of an Open Library". The Information Today article cited in the same sentence says that WorldCat.org was a continuation of OCLC's efforts "to make library resources more visible to Web users and to increase awareness of libraries as a primary source of reliable information" after its Open WorldCat program in 2004. That's different from the Open Library project. We would need a source that explicitly connects WorldCat and Open Library in order to make what looks like a claim of a causal connection between the launches of OpenLibrary.org and WorldCat.org around the same time. Biogeographist (talk) 20:30, 8 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]