Comments on: quirky worldcat and what it teaches us about openness & libraries

By: sarah louise

sarah louise — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 17:56:05 +0000

Bravo, Jessamyn! Yes, libraries (and OCLC) need to wake up to the fact that if people have money, they’ll go to Amazon or bn.com before they try to navigate the likes of WorldCat. As a librarian that uses OCLC to update records in our catalog, I think the service Worldcat provides to libraries is AMAZING. But to Joe Consumer, they need some work.

I love this line: “So what do we walk away with here? That libraries are hard, and bookstores are easy? That big libraries are more worth a trip than little libraries?” I work in a large library, but I respect the heck out of the little libraries. Thanks for posting on this.

By: VALIS » Blog Archive » Worldcat open to the public - but not much use in NZ

Wed, 06 Sep 2006 03:49:43 +0000

[...] Worldcat has gone live on the free web. This is basically a good thing, but as Jessamyn West points out: “the fact that it seems comprehensive obscures the fact that it’s not.” Jessamyn notes that many small libraries near her do not show up in Worldcat, and she is instead directed to a larger library, further away, from which she can’t check out books. [...]

By: Cindy Timmerman

Cindy Timmerman — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 19:49:52 +0000

In all fairness to us at Loudoun County Public Library, I tested worldcat the day it came live and found that OCLC had used the wrong index to query our Horizon online catalog; in all fairness to OCLC, they fixed it right away. Today I did the same search described in this post and it was successful for Loudoun….

By: Alice Sneary

Alice Sneary — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 18:34:12 +0000

Hello, all. I’m here as a blogger and not as an official voice of OCLC.
These are good points to be raised and I can tell you that a lot of OCLC staffers on the project have raised the same concerns–especially about the branch library visibility. Many libraries catalog (and therefore attach holdings in WorldCat) at the system-level, rather than the branch. So understandably, the end-user gets confused when a known title doesn’t show up for his/her zip code.
People on the WorldCat.org project are working like mad to improve the functionality before it moves out of “beta” stage.
Keep the comments and suggestions for improvements coming, through the feedback button on the right in the blue bar: http://worldcat.org/
Last thing: batchloading is free (no-charge) with many WorldCat-powered OCLC services now. I know for sure it is for WorldCat Collection Analysis. Just offering it out there as another way to improve the end-users’ experience of your library when they use WorldCat.org as a finding tool.
I’ll make sure WorldCat people see this string…

By: librariesinteract.info

librariesinteract.info — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 22:07:28 +0000

[...] Jessamyn’s recent post over at librarian.net about the difficulties of finding local copies with OpenWorldCat prompted me to see if it is easier to locate items with what is effectively our national public catalgoue, LibrariesAustralia. LibrariesAustralia has been available to the public since mid-2005. The National Bibliographic Database is our true union catalogue, LibrariesAustralia is a friendlier interface to it (if I’m wrong, NLA staff could correct me here!). Let’s compare a book that seems appropriate: “The Social Life of Information“. Searching for it on LibrariesAustralia, I find three editions listed, one which has 74 holdings. Holdings appear in a long list, with a mix of government, academic and public libraries. How will I know which one I can access? If I click on the name of the library it will tell me its location and access conditions. Most are: “Details of public access: Open to the public”. It is worth bearing in mind that these details come from a separate database, Australian Libraries Gateway which is usable by the public, but contains a lot of information about ILL rates and isn’t always aimed at non-librarians. [...]

By: Basement Tapes » quirky worldcat and what it teaches us about openness & libraries

Sun, 03 Sep 2006 14:49:31 +0000

[...] librarian.net » quirky worldcat and what it teaches us about openness & libraries [...]

By: Barbara

Barbara — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 13:46:33 +0000

I was all excited when I blogged about this on ACRLog, though curious how libraries would introduce it to students who would graduate and not have access to the subscription version. The comments that follow end with an explanation from Alane at OCLC, who I contacted for clarification.

Basically, it’s pay-as-you go. It’s self-supporting and stand-alone and we’d rather be innacurate than risk losing revenue. I’m sure there’s some fear the subscription version will lose “customers” (i.e. the members of this collaborative will not want to pay for both versions) though honestly … why should we? Why should we even maintain two if we can put a good one and a complete (at least complete for member library holdings) on the web? Maintaining a free-but-bad and a hard-to-get premium version makes no sense to me, even from a capitalist position. Especially when there’s no clear indication up front that this is so.

I still love the concept and have for years argued we must find a way to say “we can afford to put this on the web where anyone can find it, whether or not they go through a member library’s site” not “it has to pay for itself.”

Members don’t charge to search their individual catalogs through the web, even though producing them costs money. Isn’t this database ours? Aren’t we already paying a lot??

And you make a very good point, Geekchic, we OCLC members aren’t the world. It is an offensive and misleading name.

By: Bob

Bob — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 08:52:28 +0000

I’ve made the same point as Barbara to OCLC and gotten no response.

I work in a special library. I have: 1) contributed original records to WorldCat, 2) participated in ILL as a borrower and as a lender, and 3) paid a lot of money to OCLC over the years.

Yet, because we haven’t paid [large number here] for FirstSearch (a lot of money for my budget), our holdings don’t show up. Records I’ve added to the database, those show up, but with no holdings if my library is the only owner.

I’ll bet a lot of other special and small public libraries are in the same boat.

By: GeekChic

GeekChic — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 04:29:12 +0000

Jessamyn: Thank you very much for posting this. I am consistently troubled by “World”Cat and the assumption that everything worth finding is findable through it. I agree with the last commenter that it is more about “bad information” than anything else for many people at the moment.

At my previous place of work at a US public library, our consortium had its records on OCLC. Unfortunately, the information couldn’t be updated because we simply didn’t have the money. So… our information (and that of 17 other libraries) was there but was essentially wrong. It has been this way for 10 years now.

My current place of work at a fairly major Canadian public library does not participate in OCLC – and I doubt we will be any time in the near future for a variety of reasons. I’ve been told that very few Canadian public libraries participate in OCLC and I don’t see many other non-U.S. public libraries in the mix either. To me, the “World”Cat name is about as accurate as the “World” Series of baseball – at least where public libraries are concerned.

By the way, I really enjoy your blog. I particularly appreciate your insistence on raising the concerns of the smaller and/or poorer libraries.

GeekChic

By: barbara

barbara — Sat, 02 Sep 2006 22:03:45 +0000

I’m bothered that a library has to subscribe to WorldCat (not just be a member of OCLC) for its holdings to be represented in worldcat.org. The argument “we have to pay the bills” only goes so far. Do we really want a cool tool that lies? We should at least say in HUGE letters “check with your local public library” and some explanation why – to cover those that don’t catalog paperbacks or can’t afford WorldCat. Or who have great ILL services so you don’t have to travel 45 miles and then find out you don’t have borrowing privileges, but if you go home and make a request. . .

By the way, in a consortial catalog it may say its X miles to headquarters when the local library that has the book is three blocks away. How encouraging is that?

I was sooooo excited about this, and still think it has potential, but not being up front about what’s excluded really troubles me. It’s bad information. Is that what we’re about?

By: Sarah Mae

Sarah Mae — Sat, 02 Sep 2006 21:46:13 +0000

Even though the County of Los Angeles Public Library is a member of OCLC, their results do not come up in World Cat and I can’t figure out why. It took me a while to even find where to search for member libraries.

By: Rick Roche

Rick Roche — Sat, 02 Sep 2006 18:33:11 +0000

As bad as the WorldCat locator is, it has actually improved. When I tried it last October, it told me the closest copy of It Ain't Brain Surgery by Larry Dierker to Big Lake, Texas was a copy in Little Rock, Arkansas, about 670 miles away. I just tested again, and it shows a copy in Abilene, only a 134 miles away. More details in in my October archive.

By: LibrarySupportStaff.Org » Blog Archive » Jessamyn on WorldCat

LibrarySupportStaff.Org » Blog Archive » Jessamyn on WorldCat — Sat, 02 Sep 2006 15:00:30 +0000

[...] Jessamyn’s post says it wonderfully… read it, and keep on reading her (but don’t stop reading me ) [...]

By: Steven M. Cohen

Steven M. Cohen — Sat, 02 Sep 2006 13:46:51 +0000

Bravo, Jessamyn. Bravo! I use Worldcat alot (alot!!) and like it, but OCLC has to work on it alot more for it to be useful for all, especially those that think that it contains every library.

Th irony here is that OCLC is really trying to crack the divide (and I applaud them for trying), but this beta attempt has suceeded in doing the opposite. Sad.

By: Mark

Mark — Sat, 02 Sep 2006 13:36:41 +0000

I think Jessamyn’s experience shows that online services have a long way to go before they even begin to live up to the hype. There are still hoops to jump through to lay your hands on items, and if you’re a techie ‘have not’ or ‘know not’ those hoops are even harder to navigate without the help of a professional librarian who knows what they’re doing.

Mark