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C O N T E N T S January/ February 2000 No. 243
Editor in chief:
Nita Dean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . nita_ dean@ oclc. org
Editor:
Bob Murphy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . bob_ murphy@ oclc. org
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Cover Design: Linda Shepard
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otherwise noted.
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Correspondents:
Susan Abell
Pamela Bailey
Keith Belton
Diana Bitting
Jo Budler
Tracy R. Byerly
Natalie Collins
Kay Covert
Anne Craig
Carla Dewey
Shelly Edwards
Larry Godwin
Kathleen Gundrum
Sharon Hoffhines
Brian Lavoie
Dawn Lawson
Ralph LeVan
Lynn McDonald
Margaret Mohundro
Susan Olson
Kim Piper
James D. Rubottom
Kathy Schneider
Aaron Smith
Lisa Stickley
Malia Watson
Membership News
PAIS and OCLC agree to merge
Pica/ OCLC agreement finalized
William Crowe is new board chair
OCLC systems OK after Y2K transition
Users record firsts of 2000
OCLC Board of Trustees launches governance study
Harding University enters 95 millionth OCLC ILL
GPO produces 43 millionth OCLC record number
University of Oregon makes 96 millionth OCLC ILL request
Libraries invited to help build CORC
Library of Congress joins CORC project
Participants meet in Dublin to discuss CORC
Kentucky launches statewide virtual library
Dewey users update held during AASL conference
Editorial Policy Committee meets at the Library of Congress
Videos of ALA Midwinter Update Breakfast on Web
Two if by LaND: North Dakota duo wins top prize with SiteSearch
OCLC issues 1998/ 99 annual report
��� The Keystone Principles’ now available
Number of countries with libraries participating in OCLC grows
Hwa- Wei Lee named OCLC Visiting Distinguished Scholar
Nancy London promoted to executive director, OCLC Library Services for the Americas
Pat Stevens promoted to director, Product Planning and Strategy
OCLC Statistics
Karin Ford appointed library services director at OCLC/ WLN
Video of OCLC symposium at ALA available via ILL
OCLC Institute announces seminar schedule
OCLC Institute course offerings
Research
OCLC continues systems work to support international data
Meeting the challenges of digital preservation: The OAIS reference model
Changing the way people look at information technology
Libraries, U. S. Networks and OCLC
U. S. Networks and OCLC: A partnership that works
The power of cooperation
Product News
More than 2,000 journals available through Electronic Collections Online
Centro Di records added to WorldCat
Dewey for Windows software, version 2.00, now available
New profile option available for PromptCat
University of Iowa uses combined RetroCon services
Library Scene
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46 Nylink
47 OCLC Pacific
48 OCLC/ WLN Pacific Northwest
Service Center
49 OHIONET
50 PALINET
51 SOLINET
52 WILS
GOVERNING A DOT. ORG
IN THE DIGITAL AGE
F R O M J A Y J O R D A N
T he OCLC Users
Council rolled up
its sleeves and
went to work on a
complex assignment at
its Feb. 6– 8 meeting at OCLC in Dublin.
The task: provide the consulting firm of Arthur D.
Little with thoughtful feedback and insights to a
series of questions related to OCLC’s strategic
directions and governance.
The questions: What role options exist for OCLC
in the digital age? How are libraries converging,
diverging or changing? What principal overall
corporate strategic options should OCLC pursue, and
what overall structural options do these imply? What
changes, if any, should be made to OCLC’s
governance structure to enable it to become a global
library cooperative?
These are tough questions. The consultant is
posing them not only to the Users Council, but to the
OCLC Board of Trustees, OCLC- affiliated U. S. regional
networks, OCLC international distributors, a sample
of OCLC participating libraries, and libraries that do
not currently use OCLC services.
On Feb. 25, the consultant met with the Strategic
Directions and Governance Advisory Council in
Washington, D. C., for the first time. This group,
which agreed to serve at the invitation of the OCLC
Board, consists of leaders from the library and
information community. Their charge is to provide
high- level review and direction of the consultant’s
study and to present recommendations and the report
of the consultant to the OCLC Board of Trustees for
action at its November 2000 meeting.
All of the above activities are part of a study of
OCLC’s strategic directions and governance launched
by the OCLC Board of Trustees in January. The
consultant will examine environmental factors likely
to have an impact on OCLC in the future, including
the economic environment for libraries; the rapid
development of the World Wide Web,
telecommunications and computers; and other
initiatives in the library and information community.
The consultant will identify possible roles for OCLC
in the evolving global library and information
infrastructure and recommend a governance structure
appropriate to OCLC’s public purpose. Details of the
study are available in this issue of the newsletter as
well as on the OCLC Web site. Moreover, if you
would like to comment on OCLC’s governance study,
please contact your Users Council delegate, network
office, or distributor.
The decision to conduct such a study came after
nearly a year of discussions by the board as it
pondered the recent enormous changes in the
information environment and its effects on OCLC and
libraries. As William Crowe, OCLC Board chair, stated
at the OCLC Users Council meeting on Feb. 7, the
board has a responsibility “ to not be caught off guard
in the rapidly changing digital age.”
Many of you will recall that Arthur D. Little helped
OCLC develop its present governance structure in
1977, when only a small portion of the library world
was online, and when information was moving at
rates of up to 2400 baud. Today’s online environment
is dominated by the World Wide Web, which divides
its players into three main categories: dot. coms,
dot. edus and dot. orgs. The principal objective of a
dot. com enterprise is to generate economic returns
to its owners, to create shareholder value. The
principal objectives for dot. edus and for dot. orgs are
different. The vast majority of OCLC participants are
dot. edus or dot. orgs, and OCLC itself is a dot. org. At
present, OCLC has 36,000 stakeholder libraries ( 9,000
general members and 27,000 participating libraries)
in 76 countries and territories. Collectively, we have
many responsibilities, among them to grapple with
the vast opportunities and challenges of the World
Wide Web driven by values beyond the quarterly
earning reports of the dot. coms. Our goals are to
advance research and education, to organize and
preserve knowledge and pass it on to the next
generation.
This study will better position us to achieve our
shared vision of a truly global library cooperative.
We will keep you apprised of our progress.
Jay Jordan
President and Chief Executive Officer
OCLC
M E M B E R S H I P N E W S
4 OCLC Newsletter January/ February 2000
OCLC and Pica Foundation have signed an
agreement to establish a jointly owned
organization to better serve the
European library community.
Pica Foundation, based in
Leiden, the Netherlands, has
established a new Dutch limited
liability company ( Pica B. V.) and
has transferred all present
activities to this new company. OCLC will
participate in the new Pica company through a
graduated acquisition of part of the stock that will
begin at 35 percent and increase to 60 percent
within 12 months.
“ The new relationship with OCLC is an
exciting step towards the creation of an
integrated European information infrastructure,”
said Cees Datema, chairman, Pica Foundation.
“ We anticipate that this combination of staff
competencies will add value for OCLC members
globally, as well as enhance services for current
Pica customers,” said Jay Jordan, OCLC president
and CEO.
Mr. Jordan said the merger will complement
the activities of the OCLC Europe, the Middle
East & Africa office, which is located in
Birmingham, England.
Pica B. V. will continue development and
support of its current products and services,
including the further development and support
of Pica’s local library systems, the central library
system for cataloging, interlibrary loan and end-user
services.
Pica will also continue its associated
cooperation with European partners: the Agence
Bibliographique de l’Enseignement Supérieur in
Montpellier, France; and in Germany, the
Gemeinsamer Bibliotheksverbund in Göttingen,
the Hessisischer Bibliotheksverbund in Frankfurt,
and Die Deutsche Bibliothek, also in Frankfurt.
Pica B. V. is based in Leiden, the Netherlands,
and provides cataloging, interlibrary loan and
OCLC and PAIS, Public Affairs Information Service
have finalized negotiations to merge the two
organizations, effective Jan. 1, 2000.
PAIS, a not- for- profit corporation with offices in
New York City, publishes the PAIS International
database, which contains over 460,000 records of
abstracted and indexed literature from over 120
countries. OCLC is a nonprofit corporation based
in Dublin, Ohio, which serves over 36,000
libraries in 76 countries.
OCLC Public Affairs Information Service will
continue to operate in its New York City offices.
The merger follows discussion and
negotiations that began in June 1999. The joining
of resources of the two entities is expected to
support the enhancement of the PAIS database,
which is currently available via the OCLC
FirstSearch service.
“ The merger of PAIS and OCLC assures that
PAIS will continue its long tradition of chronicling
global public policy well into the 21st century,
and it will be able to meet the technological
challenges on the horizon,” said John Ganly, chair
of the PAIS Board of Trustees.
“ This alliance will benefit libraries, PAIS and
OCLC,” said Jay Jordan, OCLC president and CEO.
“ It will provide libraries with low- cost access to
global content in the social sciences; it will allow
us to repackage the PAIS abstracts and indexes and
link them to WorldCat to create greater value; and
it will bring important editorial skill sets to OCLC.”
Based in New York City, PAIS is a not- for- profit
educational corporation founded in 1914 by
librarians; chartered in 1954 by the Board of
Regents, Education Department, State of New
York; and dedicated to providing better access to
the literature of public affairs— current issues and
actions that affect world communities, countries,
people and governments. The PAIS International
database contains over 460,000 records
abstracted and indexed from literature originally
published in English, French, German, Italian,
Portuguese and Spanish. PAIS publishes indexes
and abstracts that help people identify and locate
documents about important political, economic
and social issues in public debate throughout the
world. More information about PAIS is available
on the PAIS Web site < http:// www. pais. org/>.
• • •
Pica/ OCLC agreement finalized
PAIS and OCLC agree to merge
M E M B E R S H I P N E W S
OCLC Newsletter January/ February 2000 5
William J. Crowe
Ralph K. Frazer
David P. Lauer
William J. Crowe, Spencer Librarian at the
University of Kansas, in Lawrence, was elected
chair of the OCLC Board of Trustees during its
November meeting.
Myer Kutz, chairman, Myer Kutz Associates,
who was elected vice chair of the board in 1998,
will continue in that position. Barbara Gubbin,
director, Houston Public Library, was elected
chair of the Audit Committee; Maurice Glicksman,
professor, Division of Engineering, Brown
University, and Ellen Waite- Franzen, vice president
for Information Services, University of Richmond,
will continue as chairs of the Finance and
Personnel and Compensation Committees,
respectively. Sharon J. Rogers, library consultant
and chair of the board since November 1997, and
Christine Deschamps, president, International
Federation of Library Associations and
Institutions, were elected at- large members of the
Executive Committee. Ms. Deschamps is the first
non- U. S. member of the Executive Committee.
Ralph K. Frasier, of counsel, Porter, Wright,
Morris & Arthur, and David P. Lauer, president and
chief operating officer, Bank One, NA- Columbus,
were elected to the board. The board honored
departing trustees Robert M. Duncan and
Robert H. Jeffrey.
Before being named Spencer Librarian in
June, Dr. Crowe served as vice chancellor for
information services and dean of libraries at the
University of Kansas. He was assistant to the
director and then assistant director of libraries at
Ohio State University Libraries, Columbus, from
1979 to 1990. Before that, he held management
positions at Indiana University Libraries and
technical services posts at Boston Public Library.
Dr. Crowe earned his bachelor’s degree, with
highest honors, in European history from Boston
State College, Massachusetts. He received his
master’s degree in library science from Rutgers
University in New Jersey and his doctorate from
Indiana University.
Dr. Crowe was elected to the OCLC Board
of Trustees in November 1996 by the OCLC
Users Council.
There are 15 members of the OCLC Board of
Trustees. The OCLC Users Council elects six of
the trustees. In addition, the board includes Jay
Jordan, OCLC president and CEO, and eight
trustees elected by the board, five of whom
come from fields outside librarianship.
• • •
William Crowe is new board chair
local and end- user services to hundreds of
libraries in the Netherlands, France and Germany.
OCLC is a nonprofit corporation based in Dublin,
Ohio, which serves over 36,000 libraries in 74
countries and territories.
Pica B. V. was originally founded in 1969 as Pica
Foundation. It was a joint initiative of the Royal
national Library and a number of university
libraries, and was a cooperative, nonprofit
organization for libraries and other information-providing
institutions. Pica’s central online
database was established in 1978 to reduce
library cataloging costs. Since then, Pica has
extended its services with interlibrary loan,
local library systems, reference and end- user
services. Pica B. V., established in October 1999,
is continuing the business activities of Pica
Foundation. Pica’s facilities are used by
hundreds of academic, public and other libraries
throughout Europe. More information is available
at < http:// www. pica. nl/>. An English version is
at < http:// www. pica. nl/ en/>.
• • •
M E M B E R S H I P N E W S
6 OCLC Newsletter January/ February 2000
As clocks rolled over midnight and into the new
millennium in time zones around the globe, the
New Year was greeted with spectacular
celebrations. But system engineers in the OCLC
data center barely noticed the turn of the century.
That’s what they were hoping for— a very quiet
start to the Year 2000.
“ We took the threat of Y2K problems very
seriously and worked hard to get our systems
ready for the transition,” said Dave Morris, project
manager/ coordinator, OCLC Y2K Applications
Effort. “ I think that’s why Y2K came and went
without much fanfare. We were glad that Y2K
rolled over quietly because that means our staff
members did their jobs well.”
OCLC online systems for cataloging,
interlibrary loan and reference services made the
transition to the Year 2000 without any major
problems.
As a precaution during the rollover to the new
millennium, OCLC suspended access to the
systems beginning at 7 p. m. U. S. Eastern Standard
Time on Dec. 31. The Y2K rollover went so
smoothly, the planned 24- hour access suspension
was shortened. Services were accessible to OCLC
users by 5 p. m. on Jan. 1.
“ It was a smooth transition,��� said Bill McKelvey,
manager, OCLC Information Systems Department.
“ It took a lot of work from a lot of people over a
long period of time, but the results were well
worth the effort.”
Some 400 OCLC staff members participated in
preparing for Y2K. A cooperative effort with
OCLC partners was also key to a successful
transition.
“ Many of OCLC’s computer systems share data
with our partners, so it was essential for us to
work together closely to prepare for the rollover,”
said Susan Olson, director, OCLC Network
Relations and Worldwide Library Services Partner
Programs. “ OCLC is built on cooperation, and
judging from the results, our cooperative effort
to avoid Y2K problems was successful.”
“ OCLC staff members worked diligently to
assure that the rollover went smoothly and
libraries worldwide were back to work using
OCLC services following the transition,” said
Donald J. Muccino, OCLC executive vice
president and COO. “ I am proud of their efforts!”
• • •
OCLC systems OK after Y2K transition
It did not take users long to put the OCLC system
to the test in the Year 2000. The system was
online two hours ahead of schedule Jan. 1, and
users quickly took advantage of the early startup.
At 5: 20 p. m. U. S. Eastern Standard Time, just 20
minutes after the cataloging and interlibrary loan
system came online, a University of Wisconsin
Library user entered the first OCLC Interlibrary
Loan request through the Committee for
Institutional Cooperation’s Virtual Electronic
Library and the OCLC ILL Direct Request service.
The request was for the International Academic
Credentials Handbook.
The first new bibliographic record of the new
year came at 6: 54 p. m. ( U. S. EST) and was entered
into WorldCat by the University of Strathclyde
Library in Glasgow, Scotland ( where the local
time was 11: 54 p. m.). The record— OCLC
number 43,115,303— was for “ The Afan College
( Dissolution) Order 1998.” On Feb. 16, 1995, the
University of Strathclyde became the first library
outside the United States to enter a millionth
record into WorldCat when it entered the 32
millionth OCLC record.
• • •
Users record firsts of 2000
M E M B E R S H I P N E W S
OCLC Newsletter January/ February 2000 7
The OCLC Board of Trustees has retained the
consulting firm of Arthur D. Little to conduct a
study of OCLC’s strategic directions and
governance structure. The board has also
appointed a special advisory council to help
guide and direct the study.
“ In the 21st century, OCLC’s vision is to be the
leading global library cooperative,” said William
Crowe, chair of the OCLC Board of Trustees, and
Spencer Librarian, Kenneth Spencer Research
Library, University of Kansas. “ We want to help
libraries serve people by providing economical
access to knowledge through innovation and
collaboration. The study will help us determine
how OCLC can best organize its governance to
achieve this global vision.”
“ OCLC’s present governance structure was
adopted in 1977,” said Dr. Crowe. “ At that time,
the question was how to extend membership in
OCLC to libraries outside the state of Ohio.
Today, the question is how to extend membership
in OCLC on a global basis.”
According to Dr. Crowe, the advisory council
will help guide and direct Arthur D. Little in its
study of strategic directions and governance. In
the course of the study, which will begin in
January, the consultants will hold meetings and
interviews with the OCLC Board of Trustees,
OCLC Users Council, Strategic Directions and
Governance Advisory Council, OCLC- affiliated
U. S. regional networks, international distributors,
OCLC participating libraries, and libraries that do
not currently use OCLC services. The consultant
will examine environmental factors likely to have
an impact on OCLC in the future, including the
economic environment for libraries; the rapid
development of the World Wide Web,
telecommunications and computers; and
initiatives by commercial entities to provide
information services directly to end users. The
consultant will identify possible roles for OCLC in
the evolving global library and information
infrastructure and recommend a governance
structure appropriate to OCLC’s public purpose.
The advisory council will review and revise the
consultant’s recommendations and present them
to the OCLC Board of Trustees for action at its
November 2000 meeting. Any changes in the
OCLC articles of incorporation and code of
regulations that the board recommends as a result
of the study will require ratification by the OCLC
Users Council.
The Strategic Directions and Governance
Advisory Council consists of leaders from the
library and information community. Nancy Eaton,
dean of university libraries, Pennsylvania State
University, and member, OCLC Board of Trustees,
is chair of the advisory council. Ms. Eaton has
served on the OCLC Board of Trustees since 1987,
and was board chair from 1993– 1996. She was
elected to the board by the OCLC Users Council,
where she served as a delegate from 1980– 1981
and 1986– 1989.
Members of the advisory council are: Larry
Alford, senior associate university librarian,
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and
president- elect, OCLC Users Council; Min- min
Chang, director, Library of the Hong Kong
University of Science and Technology; Christine
Deschamps, president, International Federation of
Library Associations and Institutions, and
member, OCLC Board of Trustees; Brian Follett,
vice chancellor, University of Warwick, United
Kingdom; Maurice Glicksman, professor, Division
of Engineering, Brown University, and member,
OCLC Board of Trustees; Martin Gomez, director,
Brooklyn Public Library, New York; Deanna
Marcum, president, Council on Library and
Information Resources; Kate Nevins, executive
director, SOLINET, and chair, Regional OCLC
Network Directors Advisory Committee; Sara Ann
Parker, state librarian, Missouri State Library;
Winston Tabb, associate librarian, Library of
Congress; and Jonathan Zittrain, executive
director, Berkman Center for Internet & Society,
and lecturer, Harvard Law School.
Serving as ex officio members of the advisory
council are Cees Datema, chair, Pica Foundation,
and the following members of OCLC senior
management: Jay Jordan, president and CEO; Jim
Houfek, vice president and general counsel;
George Needham, vice president, Member
Services; and Phyllis Spies, vice president,
Worldwide Library Services.
Arthur D. Little was also the consulting firm
that helped develop OCLC’s present governance
structure, which was adopted in 1977. That
structure consists of general members, Users
OCLC Board of Trustees launches study of
strategic directions and governance, appoints
special advisory council
M E M B E R S H I P N E W S
8 OCLC Newsletter January/ February 2000
Harding University, in Searcy, Arkansas, entered
the 95 millionth OCLC Interlibrary Loan ( ILL)
request on Nov. 5 for an article,“ The Miss
America Pictures Controversy and the Right
to Privacy,” in the New York Law Journal.
The Oklahoma City University Law
Library filled the request Nov. 6.
“ I was just working away, not even
realizing that I should be trying to hit the
millionth request,” said Debbie Johnson,
Interlibrary Loan technical assistant at the
Brackett Library on the Harding University
campus. “ I showed the number to Ann, and
she was very excited.”
Ann Dixon, library director at Harding
University, was formerly Ms. Johnson’s
immediate supervisor as Interlibrary Loan
librarian. “ It’s been very exciting for us to watch
the reaction of our friends in the library world for
hitting the 95 millionth request,” said Ms. Dixon.
The library handled 6,644 interlibrary loan
lending and borrowing transactions last year.
“ I love working in interlibrary loan,” said Ms.
Johnson. “ I really like helping the students and
faculty get the materials they need.”
The Interlibrary Loan staff comprises Gerald
Cox, Interlibrary Loan, Cataloging and Reference
librarian; Ms. Johnson; and four students who
help out during the work day. “ We have a special
library staff here,” Ms. Johnson continued. “ It’s
very much a family- like atmosphere.”
The Harding University Library ( OCLC
symbol: AHS) and the Oklahoma City University
Law Library ( OKY) are both members of
Amigos Library Services, an OCLC- affiliated U. S.
regional network.
Harding University is a liberal arts institution
affiliated with the Church of Christ. The college
was named in memory of James A. Harding, co-founder
and first president of Nashville Bible
School ( now David Lipscomb University) in
Nashville, Tennessee.
The Toccoa Falls College Library in Toccoa,
Georgia, entered the 94 millionth OCLC ILL
request on Oct. 4.
The OCLC Interlibrary Loan service came
online in 1979. In the 1998/ 99 fiscal year, nearly
6,200 libraries arranged over 8.2 million loans
through the system. OCLC offers a number of
products and services that support ILL, including
the OCLC ILL Direct Request service that allows
library users to enter ILL requests with little or no
staff intervention.
• • •
Harding University enters 95 millionth OCLC ILL
Staff members from the
Brackett Library on the
Harding University
campus include, left to
right: Debbie Johnson,
Interlibrary Loan
technician; Ann Dixon,
library director; and
Gerald Cox, Interlibrary
Loan librarian.
Council and Board of Trustees. General members
are those libraries that contribute all their current
Roman- alphabet cataloging to WorldCat ( the
OCLC Online Union Catalog). There are nearly
9,000 general members of OCLC. An additional
27,000 libraries use various OCLC services such
as Interlibrary Loan, FirstSearch and SiteSearch
but do not contribute all their current Roman-alphabet
cataloging to WorldCat and are classified
as participants rather than members.
General members elect 60 delegates to the
OCLC Users Council. Currently, the
apportionment of delegates among networks
and service centers is based on cataloging and
interlibrary loan activity. The Users Council
meets three times a year to provide advice and
counsel to OCLC; its principal governance
responsibilities are to elect six members of the
OCLC Board of Trustees and to ratify changes in
the articles of incorporation and code of
regulations of OCLC.
The 15- member OCLC Board of Trustees has
fiduciary and policy- setting responsibility for the
corporation. Six trustees are elected by the Users
Council, eight are elected by the board itself, and
the president and chief executive officer of OCLC
serves as a trustee by virtue of the office. Three
of the eight trustees elected by the board must be
members of the library profession.
• • •
photo provided by Harding University
M E M B E R S H I P N E W S
OCLC Newsletter January/ February 2000 9
On Dec. 14, the U. S. Government Printing Office
( GPO), the largest single disseminator of U. S.
Government publications, produced OCLC record
number 43 million. The record was for “ Federal
Royalty Certainty Act: Hearing before the
Subcommittee on Energy Research, Development,
Production and Regulation of the Committee on
Energy and Natural Resources, United States
Senate, One Hundred Sixth Congress, first
session, on S. 924 … May 18, 1999.”
Bob Luoma, one of 17 catalogers in GPO’s
Cataloging Branch, entered the record. “ I had
been entering records for about 30 minutes,” said
Mr. Luoma. “ I noticed that there were a lot of
nines showing up, but I didn’t set out to hit it.”
Mr. Luoma said he did not mention getting the
record until one of his fellow staff members
wondered aloud who had hit it. Mr. Luoma has
been with GPO for nine years.
The “ Federal Royalty Certainty Act” is but one
of more than 1 million U. S. Government
publications that GPO makes accessible in paper,
microfiche, CD- ROM, or online formats through
nearly 1,350 federal depository libraries
throughout the United States. Publications
cataloged and disseminated by GPO provide
information of current and enduring interest on a
broad assortment of topics, including
congressional documents, federal research,
business, science, technology, statistical data, law,
medicine and federal regulations. GPO cataloging
records, maintained in thousands of library online
public access catalogs and at < http:// www. access.
gpo. gov/ catalog/>, provide access to an ever-increasing
number of online titles via GPO servers
and to publications maintained at federal
depository libraries.
“ GPO’s catalogers have a well- deserved sense
of accomplishment for making U. S. Government
publications accessible to the public,” said
Thomas A. Downing, chief, Cataloging Branch.
“ OCLC’s persistent uniform resource locators, or
PURLs, help these efforts by creating an
environment for maintaining access to thousands
of online works via GPO’s server. As we look to
the future, we will continue to meet national
standards for cataloging U. S. government
publications even as we work with other CORC
participants to assist OCLC with developing new
initiatives for capturing online information.”
For more information concerning the Federal
Depository Library Program and how to obtain
access to the universe of government information
available through GPO, visit the GPO Access Web
site at < http:// www. access. gpo. gov/ su_ docs/>.
The OCLC Cooperative Online Resource
Catalog ( CORC) is an international effort to
organize and facilitate access to electronic
information resources on the World Wide Web.
OCLC is seeking additional participants in the
project < http:// www. oclc. org/ oclc/ corc/>.
• • •
GPO produces 43 millionth OCLC record number
Bob Luoma, GPO
cataloger, entered the 43
millionth record into
WorldCat.
Catalogers working within the Cataloging Branch, Library
Programs Service, United States Government Printing
Office, include, left to right: front row, Esther Simpson,
Sumati Mehta, Regina Koo, Kathy Summers, Chip
Woodward; middle row, Dennis Dearnbarger, Seema
Godbole, Glenna Garner, Diane Munoz.; back row, Wil
Danielson, Jennifer Davis, Bob Luoma, Mike Levinson,
Tony Ford and Eileen Seremeth.
photos provided by the U. S. Government Printing Office
M E M B E R S H I P N E W S
10 OCLC Newsletter January/ February 2000
On Dec. 22, the Knight Library of
the University of Oregon in
Eugene entered the 96 millionth
request on the OCLC Interlibrary
Loan ( ILL) service— the fifth time
that the library has entered a
millionth request. Chelle
Batchelor, interlibrary loan
assistant, entered the request for a
journal article from Studies in
Philosophy and Education. It
was the third such milestone request that she has
entered in her career at the university.
“ I keep thinking three is enough and I should
stop, but shooting for the millionth is exciting,”
said Ms. Batchelor. “ Every few months we have an
opportunity to have fun and get our work done at
the same time, so why not take advantage of it?”
Ms. Batchelor hit the 72 millionth ILL as a
student in 1997 and the 87 millionth as a
permanent ILL staff member in 1998. Joanne
Halgren, head of Interlibrary Loan, hit the first
millionth request for the library ( the 7 millionth)
in 1985, and Ryan Bishop, a student worker,
added the 91 millionth request on May 10, 1999.
The library has hit more OCLC millionth requests
than any other library.
Ms. Halgren, head, Interlibrary Loan, said that
she and Ms. Batchelor were again trying to hit the
millionth request. “ Chelle input 5,999,998, then I
hit 5,999,999,” said Ms. Halgren [ the OCLC ILL
service records seven digits]. Chelle had another
ready, so she sent it off and up popped another
magic millionth. We discovered later that one of
our patrons was sending requests direct from
WorldCat, and her number was 6,000,005. We are
practicing for the 100 millionth some time in the
spring of 2000.”
The University of Oregon ( OCLC symbol—
ORU) is a member of OCLC Pacific, the western
regional support, training and marketing division
of OCLC. The Knight Library, an OCLC member
since 1981, is the largest library in the state of
Oregon, with collections totaling more than
2 million volumes and approximately 17,000
journals.
• • •
University of Oregon makes 96 millionth
OCLC ILL request
The University of Oregon
entered the 96 millionth
OCLC ILL request.
Interlibrary Loan staff
members of the Knight
Library include, left to
right: Chelle Batchelor;
Joanne Halgren, head of
Interlibrary Loan; and
Aimee Yogi.
photo provided by the University of Oregon
OCLC is inviting libraries to participate in and
contribute to the development of the OCLC
Cooperative Online Resource Catalog ( CORC), an
international effort to organize and facilitate
access to electronic information resources on the
World Wide Web.
CORC is a collaborative effort to create a high-quality,
library- selected database of Web resource
descriptions modeled after the creation of
WorldCat ( the OCLC Online Union Catalog).
During this development phase, participating
libraries use the system to create records and
provide feedback to OCLC to enhance the design
of the service. CORC provides participating
libraries with a database of high- quality,
information- rich electronic resources available on
the Web and enables libraries to become the
portal of choice to the Web.
“ CORC places the library at the center of its
users’ information environment,” said Shirley
Hyatt, manager, OCLC Product Marketing, and one
of a group of team leaders in the OCLC CORC
effort. “ It has the potential to make the library the
portal of choice for access to both electronic and
print materials. CORC is the first step in building
the foundation for cataloging in the future.”
OCLC and CORC participants will continue to
develop the system until release of CORC as a
new service, planned for later in 2000.
“ Since 1971, OCLC member libraries have
been contributing records to WorldCat, making it
the world’s richest database of bibliographic
information,” said Ms. Hyatt. “ Libraries then share
these records and add them to their local
catalogs. CORC is an extension of the WorldCat
cooperative model to the World Wide Web.”
With its origin as an OCLC Office of Research
project, CORC was launched in January 1999 with
50 libraries from around the world using new,
automated tools developed by OCLC to create a
database of electronic resources. Today, in its
development phase, more than 170 libraries are
contributing to CORC, and OCLC is now
Libraries invited to help build CORC
M E M B E R S H I P N E W S
OCLC Newsletter January/ February 2000 11
Beacher J. Wiggins, director for
cataloging, Library of Congress,
recently accepted the
recommendations of an advisory
group he had appointed to identify
the potential impacts on LC programs
and operations resulting from
participation in the Cooperative
Online Resource Catalog ( CORC)
project.
In reaching the decision, the
advisory group listed several likely
advantages, including: cost
effectiveness, automatic Dewey
assignment, user friendly interface,
suggested subject terminology,
automatic searching for previously
created records, participation in and
contributions to an international
effort with the opportunity to
influence product development,
opportunity to learn more about
alternate techniques for managing
electronic resources, availability of
records for copy cataloging, and a
more efficient method of creating
pathfinders ( which is helpful to
reference staff).
The Library of Congress will
catalog selected remote electronic
resources in CORC and download
them to the LC database. The records
will be distributed through the MARC
Distribution Service.
Members of LC’s CORC evaluation
group were: John Byrum, chief,
Regional and Cooperative Cataloging
Division, and chair, Bibliographic
Enrichment Advisory Team; Victoria
Behrens, Allene Hayes and Norma
Hendrickson, Special Materials
Cataloging Division; Bruce Knarr,
Regional and Cooperative Cataloging
Division; Carolyn Larson Business
Reference Section, Science,
Technology and Business Division;
and Regina Reynolds, Serial Record
Division.
• • •
Library of Congress joins CORC project
encouraging more libraries— of all types and
sizes— to participate.
“ Increased library participation in CORC is
invaluable because of the unique combination
of assets each library brings to the effort,” said
Ms. Hyatt.
The Library of Congress and the U. S.
Government Printing Office joined the CORC
effort in December.
OCLC had originally limited the number of
participants to 100 and required a half- time
commitment from staff members at participating
libraries. “ We have waived the time requirements
and opened up enrollment because of the
demonstrated commitment from libraries to build
this service,” said Ms. Hyatt.
The list of more than 170 CORC participants
includes: consortia and statewide initiatives, such
as the Galileo Project at the University of Georgia;
and RERO, Martigny, Switzerland; national
libraries, such as the Deutsche Bibliothek,
Germany; National Library of Wales, United
Kingdom; National Library of Australia, Canberra;
and a variety of other institutions, such as St.
Joseph County Public Library, Indiana; Washtenaw
Community College, Michigan; Hong Kong
University of Science & Technology; Universidad
Autonoma de Ciudad Juarez, Mexico; Canada
Institute for Scientific and Technical Information;
the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine
Campus; NETLAB/ Desire II Project, Lund,
Sweden; National Chengchi University Libraries,
Taipei, Taiwan; U. S. Department of Transportation
Library, Washington, D. C.; Institute of Information
Science, Slovenia; the American Museum of
Natural History, New York; and the Oregon Health
Sciences University Library.
Applications are welcome from libraries
interested in participating in CORC. Libraries
may request an application via e- mail to
< corc@ oclc. org> or visit < http:// purl. oclc.
org/ corc> to find more information on CORC, as
well as an online application form.
• • •
M E M B E R S H I P N E W S
12 OCLC Newsletter January/ February 2000
by Kay Covert
Early in November, CORC
users gathered at OCLC in
Dublin, Ohio, for a thought-provoking,
second CORC
participants meeting.
Meeting attendees
interacted with one another
and provided ideas and
suggestions for CORC
development staff. User input is a critical
component in the design and implementation of
the CORC system, and the participants meeting is
one tool used to gain feedback.
The meeting featured both group and one- on-one
discussion sessions. Groups explored CORC-related
issues including database quality, use of
Dublin Core and MARC, URL maintenance,
metadata schemes and formats, pathfinders,
subject headings and international scope. The
individual show- us- your- workflow sessions— in
which users sat down at a workstation with an
OCLC developer— gave attendees the opportunity
to demonstrate how CORC is used in their
workflow, and allowed development staff to learn
how libraries are using CORC.
In all, nearly 100 CORC participants
representing eight countries and various
institution types attended the meeting— either in
person or via conference call. Jay Jordan, OCLC
president and CEO, addressed those in
attendance, congratulating participants who had
contributed the greatest number of records. Mr.
Jordan challenged the participants to increase the
number of records contributed to build the
database for the service launch planned for later
in 2000.
Other presenters included Taylor Surface,
CORC program director. Speaking about the long-range
plans for CORC, Mr. Surface said that by
cooperatively building a database of high- quality
resources, CORC is committed to placing libraries
at the center of the library user’s information
landscape, making the library Web site the portal
of choice for finding information.
Thom Hickey, chief scientist in the OCLC
Office of Research, presented a CORC status
report, which included a look at features in
development. He said features CORC users can
look forward to include WorldCat integration;
authority control; Dublin Core, Pathfinder and
editing enhancements; and Unicode support.
Eric Childress, OCLC senior product support
specialist, shared highlights from the Dublin Core-
7 conference held in Germany. The DC- 7 meeting
resulted in revised recommendations for Dublin
Core qualifiers, the formation of work plans and a
schedule, and the creation of new interest groups
and work groups.
During day two of the meeting, Terry Noreault,
vice president, OCLC Office of Research, made a
presentation on the “ Future of Libraries.”
Participants meet in Dublin to discuss CORC
CORC participants gather
at OCLC in Dublin, Ohio.
M E M B E R S H I P N E W S
OCLC Newsletter January/ February 2000 13
Dr. Noreault discussed how core, brick- and-mortar
library values can be applied to the Digital
Knowledge Age as a cooperatively built Web
presence resulting in the world’s greatest library.
Lynn Kellar, director, OCLC Database and
Offline Products, provided insight into the CORC
development process. She said the rapid
application development methodology is being
used by developers of the CORC project for its
ability to be user driven, incorporate rapid
change, and comply with accepted standards.
The meeting concluded with attendees
assigning priorities to their ideas and suggestions.
Automatic URL checking ( for link status and
content changes), authority checking, system and
pathfinder documentation, record quality and
Unicode support were listed as significant
priorities.— Kay Covert is access support
specialist, OCLC.
• • ����
On Nov. 1, the Kentucky Commonwealth Virtual
Library ( KCVL) launched its comprehensive
information resources and services.
Using OCLC SiteSearch WebZ software as its
powerful front- end platform, the virtual library
makes research easy and convenient for the
Kentucky Commonwealth Virtual University
( KCVU) community and the citizens of the
commonwealth.
As the gateway to information resources
housed either in Kentucky libraries or accessible
through the Internet, the KCVL Web site
< http:// www. kcvl. org> offers, through one
seamless interface, a wide range of information,
including 16 OCLC FirstSearch service databases.
The online public access catalogs of the eight
public universities and 28 community and
technical colleges in the Kentucky Community
and Technical College System ( KCTCS) are
accessible on the virtual library, along with the
Z39.50- compliant OPACs of other Kentucky
libraries. Access to these resources, which are
either housed in Kentucky libraries or accessible
through the Internet, allows students to find the
holdings of each library and to have materials
delivered to the library near them.
The virtual library also includes a unique
Kentuckiana collection; state and federal
government information resources organized by
subjects and annotated by librarians;
an “ anytime, anywhere” tutorial to
help students and citizens tap into the
riches on the Web by showing them
step- by- step what the Web resources
are, how to search and assess them,
and how to use them responsibly; and
a Virtual Reference Desk, built as a
gateway to non- governmental Web
resources that are of value to Kentuckians in
general.
“ Though the KCVU students are its primary
audience, the virtual library has been constructed
to support lifelong learning for all Kentuckians,”
said Ling- yuh W. ( Miko) Pattie, director, Kentucky
Commonwealth Virtual Library. “ The recognition
that the library is an essential building block in
developing this virtual university makes it stand
out.”
Ms. Pattie said the KCVL is built on a long
tradition of cooperation and collaboration among
all types of libraries through the Kentucky Library
Network ( KLN), a resource sharing membership
organization established in 1985.
“ OCLC is proud to be an integral part of this
exciting project,” said George Needham, vice
president, OCLC Member Services. “ It strongly
complements our vision of helping libraries serve
people by providing economical access to
knowledge through innovation and
collaboration.”
OCLC SiteSearch software provides a
comprehensive solution for managing distributed
library information resources in a World Wide Web
environment. It offers a toolkit that lets libraries
integrate their electronic resources under one
Web interface, provide flexible access to those
resources, and build unique local databases.
Introduced in 1991, the OCLC
FirstSearch service is designed for people
who use libraries and requires no training
or online search experience. FirstSearch
provides access to 85 databases, more
than 2,000 electronic journals from
Electronic Collections Online, and links
to the OCLC Interlibrary Loan service.
• • •
Kentucky launches statewide virtual library
Miko Pattie, director,
Kentucky Commonwealth
Virtual Library
photo provided by Kentucky Commonwealth Virtual Library
M E M B E R S H I P N E W S
14 OCLC Newsletter January/ February 2000
by Dawn Lawson
OCLC Forest Press
conducted a Dewey
Breakfast/ Update at the
American Association of
School Librarians ( AASL)
conference in November.
Lois Winkel, editor of
Subject Headings for
Children, and Winton
Matthews, assistant editor of the Dewey Decimal
Classification, presented “ Teaching Search
Strategies Using Subject Headings for Children”
at the breakfast. The program offered an in- depth
view of how and why the second edition of
Subject Headings for Children was published
in 1998.
The first edition of Subject Headings for
Children, published in 1994, was conceived when
Ms. Winkel saw the need for a publication that
provided Dewey numbers associated with Library
of Congress Subject Headings assigned to
children’s material. She knew that such a work
would be extremely useful to school librarians,
teachers, parents and children for identifying
topics of interest. That edition contained 15,303
LC subject headings and numbers from the full
DDC Edition 20.
By the end of 1996, the final editing of Edition
21 of the Dewey Decimal Classification and
Edition 13 of the Abridged Dewey Decimal
Classification was completed. At that time, it
was determined that a new edition of Subject
Headings for Children was also needed. Not only
had some of the DDC numbers changed, but so
had some of the LC Subject Headings. In
addition, new headings had been created, and
some of the headings excluded from the first
edition were then deemed necessary.
The initial steps in producing the new
edition were completed in the OCLC
Office of Research by Diane Vizine-
Goetz, Andrew Houghton and Ed
O’Neill. They created a database
consisting of the first edition’s
headings, and then amended and
supplemented it based on a search
of WorldCat. Next, the resulting
list of proposed headings was
reviewed, first by Ms. Winkel, and
then by Heeja Chung, head of
cataloging of the Westchester
Library System and past chair of the ALA Subject
Analysis Committee’s Subcommittee.
Mr. Matthews and Joan S. Mitchell, editor in
chief of the DDC, reviewed the revised list at the
Decimal Classification Division of the Library of
Congress. The first step involved changing the
unabridged DDC numbers to abridged numbers.
( Although the first edition of Subject Headings
for Children had provided unabridged numbers,
a move to abridged numbers was made in the
second edition because school libraries and many
public libraries use the abridged edition more
frequently.) In a second step, the numbers were
verified in relation to the subject headings. Some
of the numbers were inaccurate because the
record from which the heading had been
obtained had more than one heading and the
number corresponded to the other heading.
Other numbers required updates to agree with
revisions in the DDC.
The list was then sent back to OCLC for
loading into the database. The OCLC Office of
Research completed a semi- automatic validation
of the headings against the LC Subject Authority
file, which was supplemented by further manual
verification at OCLC and LC. The final corrected
database contained 20,209 headings, an increase
of 4,906 headings over the database used to
produce the first edition.
That database forms the basis of volume 1 of
Subject Headings for Children, a two- volume
work. Volume 2 provides a keyword index to the
headings in Volume 1. Like Volume 1, the second
volume was a joint effort by OCLC Office of
Research staff— who prepared and ran database
routines to produce a list of the keywords and
their headings— Ms. Winkel, Mr. Matthews, and
other Dewey experts who reviewed the list.
More than 18 months in the making, the
second edition of Subject Headings for
Children has proven to be an
extremely useful tool. OCLC Forest
Press recently paired it with
Abridged Edition 13 in an affordable
combination package. For more
information about this package,
contact OCLC Forest Press at + 1- 614-
764- 6237 or 1- 800- 848- 5878, ext.
6237.— Dawn Lawson is manager,
Electronic Products, OCLC Forest Press.
• �� •
Dewey users update held during AASL conference
M E M B E R S H I P N E W S
OCLC Newsletter January/ February 2000 15
The Decimal Classification Editorial Policy
Committee ( EPC) held its 113th meeting at the
Library of Congress on Nov. 7– 9, 1999.
The opening session featured presentations by
Diane Vizine- Goetz, consulting research scientist,
OCLC Office of Research, on Dewey software in
the Cooperative Online Resource Catalog and on
knowledge organization research activities at
OCLC; and by Dawn Lawson, manager, electronic
products, OCLC Forest Press, on the status of
Dewey electronic products.
EPC reviewed the update policy for the DDC
and approved the use of the electronic versions of
the DDC as the chief source of annual updates
instead of DC&. “ The annual version of the
Dewey for Windows software automatically
incorporates all updates,” said Joan S. Mitchell,
editor in chief, DDC, and executive director,
OCLC Forest Press. “ In addition, Dewey for
Windows includes more built numbers and
additional terminology than announced in DC&.”
The committee also approved updates for
several parts of the Dewey Decimal Classification
system to be included in the next edition: Tables
3A, 3B, and 4; 360 Social problems and services;
400 Language; 560- 590 Life sciences; and 700 The
arts. EPC also approved a draft of the abridged
edition version of Table 1.
On Dec. 31, David Balatti, director,
Bibliographic Services, National Library of
Canada, completed his second and final term as
chair of EPC. Andrea Stamm, head, Catalog
Department, Northwestern University, was
elected chair, and Pamela Brown, Information
Technology Services director, Suburban Library
System, Burr Ridge, Illinois, vice- chair.
The next meeting of the Editorial Policy
Committee will be May 3– 5 at the Library
of Congress.
The Decimal Classification Editorial Policy
Committee is a joint committee of OCLC Forest
Press and the American Library Association. The
committee works with the editors of the Dewey
Decimal Classification system and advises OCLC
Forest Press on matters relating to the general
development of the classification. The
committee’s 10 members include public, special,
and academic librarians, and library educators.
OCLC Forest Press, a division of OCLC since
1988, publishes the Dewey Decimal Classification
system, the world’s most widely used system, and
a variety of related materials. More information
about OCLC Forest Press and Dewey for Windows
2.00 is available on the World Wide Web at
< http:// www. purl. org/ oclc/ fp/> or via
telephone at 1- 800- 848- 5878, extension 6237 or
+ 1- 614- 764- 6237.
Dewey, DDC and Dewey Decimal Classification
are registered trademarks of OCLC.
• • •
Editorial Policy Committee meets at
the Library of Congress
Joan S. Mitchell,
editor in chief, DDC, and
executive director, OCLC
Forest Press
Videos of ALA Midwinter Update Breakfast on Web
Video presentations from the ALA Midwinter OCLC Update Breakfast, which
present up- to- date information on OCLC programs and services, are now on the
OCLC Web site. From the home page < http:// www/ oclc. org/>, choose
Announcements, then Watch a Video of the OCLC Update Breakfast at
ALA Midwinter.
Jay Jordan, OCLC president and chief executive officer, and five other OCLC
speakers report on the latest developments in OCLC strategies, collaborative
programs, and online services.
The RealPlayer plugin is required for viewing the videos. The basic version is
available free of charge at < http:// www. real. com/ player/ index. html>.
M E M B E R S H I P N E W S
16 OCLC Newsletter January/ February 2000
Two if by LaND: North Dakota duo
wins top prize with SiteSearch
by Malia Watson
Ellen Kotrba and Mark Diers
faced a bit of a dilemma in
November when they
attended their first OCLC
SiteSearch training session
in Dublin, Ohio.
The North Dakota Library
Association’s annual
conference was
approaching and Ms. Kotrba and Mr. Diers were
responsible for implementing the first phase of
the Library access North Dakota ( LaND) project
for the conference. LaND is a joint venture of the
North Dakota library community, the North
Dakota University System and the North Dakota
State Library, under the direction of the North
Dakota Library Coordinating Council.
The LaND project grew out of the statewide
library service vision, articulated in Library
Vision 2004 < http:// ndsl. lib. state. nd. us/ ndla/
v2004. htm>, to provide all citizens of North
Dakota with “ convenient and timely access to
information.” Its mandate required that LaND be
able to search both local and remote Z39.50
resources and support cross- database searching.
OCLC SiteSearch would fit the bill.
Of course, the November training session was
the first time that Ms. Kotrba and Mr. Diers were
touching the software— with the conference just
a couple of weeks away.
And even though they
were learning all about
version 4.1.0, they
planned to implement a
4.0.2 environment since
4.1.0 would not be
released until the week
of the conference.
After they learned
about the merge and de-duplication
features of
4.1.0, concerns surfaced.
Merge and de-duplication
would
complement the
demonstration perfectly, but the window
between the release date for 4.1.0 and
demonstration was narrow— just four days.
Could the two of them put together the test
environment and configure the extra features in
such a short time based only on the training
sessions and documentation?
With the help of project planning assistance,
Ms. Kotrba and Mr. Diers decided to take their
chances. Ms. Kotrba, the “ techie” support
specialist and librarian of the duo, gathered
database and server configuration information,
while Mr. Diers, the systems guy, worked on the
new IBM box to install the software.
Ms. Kotrba created new topic areas and group
databases they would need and stepped through
the documentation. Working from the “ vanilla”
interface, the two configured an environment in
time for the conference. The conference went
well— very well.
The LaND project earned the “ Exhibit of the
Year” award and impressed librarians and
administrators across the state. Looking back on
the project, Ms. Kotrba had this bit of advice for
SiteSearch users in a similar situation: “ Prepare for
the publicity early on!”
They are now ready to take on the next phase
of LaND. The two- person operation spent all of
40 hours— one work week— to install and
implement their “ test” environment. They had the
right mix of technical
background for
computer systems and
library databases.
Working with project
planning, they were able
to focus on their
immediate requirements.
— Malia Watson is
OCLC SiteSearch
product support
specialist.
• • •
Mark Diers and Ellen Kotrba implemented the first phase of
the Library access North Dakota project using
OCLC SiteSearch software.
photo provided by Mark Diers and Ellen Kotrba
M E M B E R S H I P N E W S
OCLC Newsletter January/ February 2000 17
OCLC issues 1998/ 99
annual report
OCLC has issued its 32nd annual report.
In it, Jay Jordan, OCLC president and chief
executive officer, said that the digital age offers
libraries an opportunity to shape the future of
knowledge management in the networked
community of the World Wide Web.
“ Constant technological change, the
phenomenal growth of the Internet, and the
emergence of e- commerce are putting new
pressures on libraries,” said Mr. Jordan. “ OCLC is
uniquely positioned to help member libraries
withstand these pressures and thrive in the digital
age. We will continue to focus on making libraries
the portal of choice for knowledge seekers. If we
optimize the power of collaboration, this will
indeed be a great time for libraries.”
For the year ended June 30, 1999, OCLC
revenues were $ 146.1 million, up 7 percent from
the previous year as libraries continued to increase
their use of OCLC online cataloging, resource
sharing and reference services. Contribution to
equity was $ 7.3 million. OCLC provided member
libraries with $ 9.6 million in credits for cataloging
and resource sharing to encourage the growth and
enhance the quality of WorldCat.
Highlights of the 1998/ 99 OCLC Annual Report
include:
· The number of participating libraries increased
to 34,775 from 30,154.
· For the first time, the OCLC online system for
cataloging and resource sharing handled more
than 1 billion messages as libraries cataloged
55.7 million items and arranged 8.2 million
interlibrary loans.
· More than 1,200 libraries used the OCLC ILL
Fee Management service to reconcile 458,000
ILL transactions, saving libraries
approximately $ 15 million in
administrative costs.
· 2.2 million new cataloging
records were added to
WorldCat.
· Location listings in WorldCat
grew to 720 million from
668 million.
· 15,000 libraries around the
world used the OCLC FirstSearch
service, performing 61.9 million searches, a
23 percent increase over the previous year.
· The number of e- journals available through the
OCLC FirstSearch Electronic Collections
Online service nearly doubled, reaching 1,761
journals from 48 publishers.
· OCLC and WLN merged to form the
OCLC/ WLN Pacific Northwest Service Center.
· The OCLC Institute conducted 40 educational
events for 1,114 people.
· The OCLC Office of Research launched the
Cooperative Online Resource Catalog project,
in which libraries are using automated tools to
build a shared database of Internet resources.
Printed copies of the report can be obtained
by writing to: OCLC Support Services, MC 437,
6565 Frantz Rd., Dublin, Ohio 43017- 3395;
e- mail < orders@ oclc. org>; or
fax (+ 1- 614- 798- 5728). When requesting the
report, include the item number— MAN8440—
and the quantity needed. The OCLC Annual
Report is now available on the World Wide Web
< http:// www. oclc. org/ oclc/ ar99/ ar. htm>.
• • •
M E M B E R S H I P N E W S
18 OCLC Newsletter January/ February 2000
The Association of Research Libraries and OCLC
announce the availability of ‘ The Keystone Principles’
The Association of Research Libraries ( ARL) and
OCLC announce the availability of The Keystone
Principles, a collection of guiding principles and
action items developed to establish a foundation
for joint future- oriented activity based on
traditional academic library values.
In September, 80 academic library leaders
engaged in a series of discussions and working
groups at the ARL/ OCLC Strategic Issues Forum
for Academic Library Directors in Keystone,
Colorado. The product of these discussions, The
Keystone Principles express a set of core values
and related actions believed to be critical for
creating and sustaining open and dynamic user-oriented
library systems that will be relevant,
viable and vital in the new century.
The Keystone Principles are published with
the unanimous support of the conference
participants to promote discussion on issues of
vital interest to libraries and can be found online
at < http:// www. arl. org/ training/ keystone. html>.
The Association of Research Libraries
represents 122 of the major research libraries in
North America and works to shape and influence
forces affecting the future of research libraries in
the process of scholarly communication. ARL
programs and services promote equitable access
to, and effective use of knowledge in support of
teaching, research, scholarship and community
service. The association articulates the concerns
of research libraries and their institutions, forges
coalitions, influences information policy
development, and supports innovation and
improvement in research library operations.
• • •
Number of countries with libraries
participating in OCLC grows
The number of countries and territories in which
libraries use OCLC products and services has
grown from 67 to 74. In some countries, there
are only one or two libraries using OCLC
cataloging or reference services; in others there
are hundreds.
The countries that have been added recently
are: Bahrain, Botswana, Kuwait, Macau,
Micronesia, Portugal and Zimbabwe.
“ The recent rapid growth in Internet
connectivity in Europe, the Middle East and Africa
has resulted in many more libraries being able to
take advantage of OCLC membership and
services,” said Janet Lees, managing director,
OCLC Europe, the Middle East & Africa. “ The
recent survey published by Forrester Research
indicates that Internet penetration is set to
double in the region again by 2003, thus
providing libraries with the challenge of
extending their online services. OCLC looks
forward to playing its part in supporting libraries
in this period of rapid change.”
According to Andrew H. Wang, executive
director, OCLC Asia Pacific,“ The improving
quality of Internet communications, OCLC’s
introduction of online reference services ( namely,
FirstSearch and Electronic Collections Online), as
well as consortia arrangements in many parts of
Asia Pacific account for the growth of OCLC users
in Asia and the Pacific region.”
The 74 countries are: Argentina, Austria,
Australia, Bahrain, Barbados, Belgium, Bermuda,
Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China,
Colombia, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Czech Republic,
Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France,
Germany, Ghana, Greece, Guam, Hong Kong,
Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy,
Jamaica, Japan, Kuwait, Latvia, Lithuania,
Luxembourg, Macau, Malaysia, Mexico,
Micronesia, Namibia, Netherlands, New Zealand,
Nicaragua, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Portugal,
Puerto Rico, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia,
Singapore, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, South
Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland,
Taiwan, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey,
Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom,
United States, U. S. Virgin Islands, Venezuela and
Zimbabwe.
• • •
M E M B E R S H I P N E W S
OCLC Newsletter January/ February 2000 19
Hwa- Wei Lee named OCLC Visiting
Distinguished Scholar
Hwa- Wei Lee, dean emeritus, Ohio University
Libraries, has been named OCLC Visiting
Distinguished Scholar for a one- year term
beginning Jan. 1.
The Visiting Distinguished Scholar program is
sponsored by the OCLC Office of Research to
bring experienced educators and administrators
to OCLC.
Dr. Lee will be working with the OCLC
Institute to help extend its program
internationally, with a focus on the Asia Pacific
region. The institute promotes the evolution of
libraries through advanced education and
knowledge exchange.
“ I consider it a great privilege to continue my
association with OCLC in a much closer
relationship this coming year,” said Dr. Lee. “ I am
especially pleased that I will be working in my
new role to strengthen OCLC’s professional
education and training programs in Asia through
the OCLC Institute and OCLC Asia Pacific. The
new initiative of the OCLC Institute in Asia is well
timed and will expand the tie between OCLC and
the fast- developing Asian library community.”
“ Dr. Lee brings a deep personal and
professional commitment to the role of libraries
in the countries and in the lives of the people of
the Asia Pacific region,” said Martin Dillon,
executive director, OCLC Institute. “ We expect
his knowledge and insight to be instrumental as
the OCLC Institute expands globally.”
Since 1970, Dr. Lee has served as a library
consultant and lecturer under the sponsorship of
various organizations and agencies, including the
Asia Foundation, the Food and Agricultural
Organization of the United Nations, the Japan
Foundation Center for Global Partnership, the
International Development Research Centre of
Canada, and the U. S. Agency for International
Development.
Dr. Lee was dean of University Libraries, Ohio
University, from 1978 to 1999. He served as the
OHIONET delegate on the OCLC Users Council
from 1985– 1991, and as delegate- at- large to the
Second White House Conference on Library and
Information Services in July 1991.
Dr. Lee has received distinguished service
awards from the American Library Association as
Councillor for 1988– 1992 and 1993– 1997, the
Ohio Library and Information Network, the
Chinese Academic and Professional Association in
Mid- America, and the Library Association of China
( Taiwan). He was recognized in 1991 with the
John Ames Humphry Award for International
Librarianship.
During the past decade, Dr. Lee has been
appointed advisor to the National Library of
China and consultant to the National Central
Library in Taiwan and to the Peking University
Library Foundation. He has served as visiting
professor to nine Chinese universities. He is 1999
Ohio Hall of Fame Librarian.
Author of three books and some 60 articles,
conference papers and consultant reports, Dr. Lee
has organized eight international conferences.
Currently, he is a member of the Advisory Board
of the American Association of
Universities/ Association of Research Libraries
Global Resources Program. More information is
available on Dr. Lee’s personal home page
< http:// www. library. ohiou. edu/ libinfo/ staff/ per
sonal/ leeh/ leeh. htm>.
Dr. Lee earned a bachelor’s degree in education
from National Taiwan Normal University; a
master’s degree in education as well as a master’s
in library science, both from the University of
Pittsburgh; and a doctoral degree in foundations
of education and library science, also from the
University of Pittsburgh.
• • •
Hwa- Wei Lee,
dean emeritus, Ohio
University Libraries
M E M B E R S H I P N E W S
20 OCLC Newsletter January/ February 2000
OCLC Statistics
( as of Jan. 1, 2000)
Current statistics are at
< http:// www. oclc. org/
oclc/ new/ stats. htm>.
Par ticipating
libraries
36,304
New member libraries
( Nov. 1– Dec. 31, 1999)
281
Total interlibrary loan
requests
96,054,453
Nancy London promoted to executive director,
OCLC Library Services for the Americas
Nancy London has been promoted to executive
director, Library Services for the Americas, by
Phyllis B. Spies, vice president, OCLC Worldwide
Library Services.
As executive director, Ms. London’s
management responsibilities will include Latin
America and the Caribbean in addition to the
United States and Canada.
“ Nancy is an outstanding performer and has
made significant contributions during her tenure,”
said Ms. Spies. “ She has a bias toward action and
staff development. I am confident that she will
play an important role in making OCLC the
leading library cooperative in North, South and
Central America.”
Ms. London joined OCLC in 1993 as sales
promotion manager and was promoted in 1995
to East regional marketing manager where she
worked with OCLC- affiliated regional networks.
In 1997 she was named director, OCLC’s National
Sales Division. Prior to joining OCLC, she was
marketing manager at Checkfree Corporation.
She began her career at Mead Data Central ( now
LEXIS- NEXIS) as a financial specialist performing
market profitability analyses for products, and later
managed market research for Micro Electronics.
Ms. London holds both a bachelor’s and a
master’s degree in business administration from
Ohio State University.
• • •
Pat Stevens promoted to director,
Product Planning and Strategy
Pat Stevens has joined OCLC as director, Product
Planning and Strategy. She has been a marketing
consultant in the OCLC Distributed Systems
division since 1993.
In her new position, Ms. Stevens is helping
OCLC develop and market integrated library
services that enable libraries to provide their
users with state- of- the- art information access and
delivery.
Ms. Stevens’ experience has included market
research, database and interface design, and
product management for Maxwell Online, Avatar
Systems, Alpha Omega Group and the Inter-
American Development Bank. Previously, Ms.
Stevens worked at OCLC Local Systems as a
project manager. From 1971– 1980, she
developed cataloging polices and procedures for
the University of Maryland, College Park.
Ms. Stevens is currently chair, Standards
Committee, National Information Standards
Organization, and has made presentations on
standards- related topics.
A graduate of Trinity College in Washington,
D. C., Ms. Stevens holds a master’s degree in
library science from the University of Maryland
and has done graduate work in Information
Systems Management at the University of
Maryland, College Park.
• • •
Nancy London
Pat Stevens
M E M B E R S H I P N E W S
OCLC Newsletter January/ February 2000 21
Karin Ford appointed library services director
at OCLC/ WLN
Karin Ford has been named library services
director at OCLC/ WLN Pacific Northwest Service
Center where she will manage all OCLC/ WLN
services and products offered to libraries.
Prior to joining OCLC/ WLN, Ms. Ford was
associate director for Library Information Services
for 11 years at the Idaho State Library, where she
worked with the Government Information Center,
Collection Services and the Talking Book Library.
As a member of the Idaho State Library
Management Team, she helped to plan and
administer programs, services, policies and a $ 3.7
million budget. From 1985– 1988, she was
collection services supervisor, also at the Idaho
State Library.
From 1983– 1985, Ms. Ford was affiliated with
Miami University, King Library, Oxford, Ohio, as
history and geography bibliographer and
reference librarian. From 1977– 1983, she held
various positions at the Idaho State Historical
Society, Boise, Idaho.
She was president of the American Library
Association New Members Round Table from
1988– 1989. In 1995, she was chair of the Idaho
Applications Subcommittee of the Information
Technology Advisory Council.
Ms. Ford graduated from Boise State University
with a bachelor’s degree in history. She has a
master’s degree in librarianship from the
University of Denver.
OCLC and WLN merged on Jan. 1, 1999, and
WLN became the OCLC/ WLN Pacific Northwest
Service Center. More information about the
service center is available at
< http:// www. wln. org/>.
• • •
Highest OCLC
record number
43,114,704
Location listings
( holdings)
743,016,405
FirstSearch searches
( since October 1991)
250,414,113
Karin Ford
Video of OCLC symposium at ALA available via ILL
“ Libraries and the Web: Shaping and Defining the
Future,” an OCLC symposium held Jan. 14 at the
ALA Midwinter meeting in San Antonio, Texas, is
now available on videotape.
Priscilla Caplan introduced the program and
moderated the three- and- a- half- hour discussion of
how libraries can take a leadership role in
managing Web resources through collaborative
action and the adoption of emerging standards.
Speakers include Eric Miller, senior research
scientist, OCLC; Stu Weibel, consulting research
scientist, OCLC; Dan Connolly, director of
architecture, World Wide Web Consortium; Karen
Calhoun, head of cataloging, Cornell University;
and Jesús Lau, director general de Apoyo
Academico, Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad
Juárez, in Mexico.
Requests for this video— control number
43481531— may be sent to the OCLC Information
Center— holding symbol OCC. Libraries that do
not participate in the OCLC Interlibrary Loan
( ILL) service may send requests on the ALA
interlibrary loan request form to: OCLC
Information Center, P. O. Box 7777, Dublin, Ohio,
43017- 0702. Borrowed videos may be freely
duplicated for the borrowing organization’s use.
• • •
M E M B E R S H I P N E W S
22 OCLC Newsletter January/ February 2000
OCLC Institute announces
seminar schedule
The OCLC Institute has posted its schedule of
seminars for the first half of 2000. In addition to
the seminars listed, the Institute will be making
several special presentations, including three
half- day seminars in conjunction with the
research library directors meeting at OCLC in
March and a Metadata seminar in Copenhagen,
Denmark, in April.
The OCLC Institute has added a new seminar.
Plan now to register for the May 8– 10
“ Introduction to Knowledge Management:
Methods and Systems” seminar. Those who have
attended either “ Knowledge Access Management”
or “ Using Metadata for Knowledge Management”
will find this to be a logical next step in their
continuing professional development.
The OCLC Institute, an educational division of
OCLC, promotes the evolution of libraries
through advanced education and knowledge
exchange. The OCLC Institute conducts
educational and consulting programs worldwide.
• • •
OCLC Institute course offerings
Course Date Course Title Location/ Sponsor
March 27– 29 Knowledge Access Management Dublin, Ohio; offered by the
OCLC Institute
March 27– 29 Knowledge Access Management Washington, D. C.; offered by
CAPCON and the OCLC Institute
April 3– 5 Knowledge Access Management Dublin, Ohio; offered by the
for Reference Librarians OCLC Institute
April 6– 7 Technology Planning in a Dublin, Ohio; offered by
Time of Rapid Change OHIONET and the OCLC Institute
April 10– 12 Using Metadata for Dublin, Ohio; offered by the
Knowledge Management OCLC Institute
April 10– 12 Knowledge Access Management Ames, Iowa; offered by BCR and
the OCLC Institute
April 17– 18 Knowledge Access on the Web: Washington, D. C.; offered by
Metadata Applications CAPCON and the OCLC Institute
April 25– 26 Knowledge Access on the Web: Dublin, Ohio; offered by the
Metadata Applications OCLC Institute
May 8– 10 Intro to Knowledge Management: Dublin, Ohio; offered by the
Methods and Systems ( NEW) OCLC Institute
May 15– 16 Knowledge Access on the Web: Dublin, Ohio; offered by the
Metadata Applications OCLC Institute
June 15– 16 Continuity and Innovation in Indianapolis, Indiana; offered by
Resource Sharing INCOLSA and the OCLC Institute
To register or for details on any OCLC Institute events, visit the
OCLC Institute home page at < http:// oclc. org/ institute/>.
OCLC Newsletter January/ February 2000 23
R E S E A R C H
OCLC continues systems work to support
international data
by Ralph LeVan
As OCLC extends the global
nature of its services,
changes to its systems
become necessary. One of
the requirements for the
support of international data
is rich support of letters and
symbols from non- English
languages. This article
describes some of the issues involved in adding
this rich support into our latest system: the
Cooperative Online Resource Catalog ( CORC).
A central feature of internationalization is the
characterset— a set of letters and symbols used to
encode text data where each character is assigned
a numeric value in the characterset. Literally
hundreds of charactersets exist. ASCII is an
example of such a characterset. Pure ASCII
contains only 128 characters, and the numeric
values for those characters ( ranging from 0 to
127) can be encoded in a binary number seven
bits long. Pure ASCII is also known as 7- bit ASCII.
But, the fundamental unit of data in modern
computers is the 8- bit byte, which encodes values
from 0 to 255. So most computers use a version
of ASCII that contains 256 characters. Many of
the hundreds of charactersets were created by
defining new characters for the extra 128
characters gained by expansion of ASCII from 128
to 256 characters. Latin- 1 is the characterset used
by most English- based computers, and it is an
expanded ASCII characterset. The USMARC
characterset ( USM- 94) starts with the ANSEL
characterset ( a close relative of Latin- 1) and adds
rules for adding Cyrillic, Hebrew, Arabic, East
Asian Character Code ( EACC) characters and
some special symbols. The EACC characters are
themselves another characterset for encoding
Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters.
Text encoded in these charactersets does not
usually contain any indication of the characterset,
which can be a problem. A program will
misbehave when it tries to manipulate text that it
assumes is encoded in Latin- 1 but which is actually
encoded in USM- 94. Fortunately, this problem
does not occur frequently. Most systems that
exchange data assume that they are using the
same characterset. Since the majority of data on
the Internet is encoded in Latin- 1, this is usually a
safe assumption. In addition, some of the
applications and protocols used on the Internet do
indicate the characterset used for their encoding.
But, what do you do when your application
doesn’t know what the characterset is or when
you want to create text with characters from
more than one language? For these situations, a
new characterset set was defined: Unicode.
Unicode uses 16 bits to encode a character and
can therefore contain 64,000 characters. Unicode
is the union of most of the characters from most
of the modern written languages of the world.
Unicode is not perfect, but there are groups
working to improve it.
Because Unicode characters are 16 bits long,
they take up twice as much room in a file as the
same characters in 8- bit ASCII. Since most of the
text in the world is encoded in 8- bit ASCII, simply
switching to Unicode would double the disk
space requirements of the world. This is clearly
unacceptable. So, alternative encodings of
Unicode are in use. The most popular of these is
UTF- 8, an encoding that turns the 7- bit ASCII
characters in Unicode back into their original
encoding. It is tricky, but the result is that
Unicode data encoded in UTF- 8 takes up
considerably less space. It also has the
convenient side effect that 7- bit ASCII data can be
treated just as if it were UTF- 8- encoded Unicode.
Unicode is the heart of OCLC’s
internationalization solution. OCLC is starting to
replace the Newton software it used to build all
of its non- cataloging databases with the Pears
database engine. Pears contains many
improvements over Newton, and Unicode
support is one of those improvements. All text
data stored in OCLC’s new Pears databases is
encoded in UTF- 8. But Pears is only part of the
solution. There are still many opportunities to
misinterpret the user’s data.
Data flows from a user’s terminal to the
database and from the database back to the
terminal. A clear understanding of this flow is
important in understanding the complexity of the
internationalization problem. Figure 1 illustrates
this data flow for the CORC system. CORC will
be OCLC’s first Pears- based system to support
internationalization beyond USM- 94.
B r o w s e r
A
I
B
C
D E
H G
F
J
C O R C
Z 3 9 . 5 0
S e r v e r
P e a r s
E n g i n e D a t a b a s e
R E S E A R C H
24 OCLC Newsletter January/ February 2000
The main components of the system are the user’s
computer, the user’s Web browser, the CORC
software, a Z39.50 server, the Pears database
engine and the database that it maintains. Each
transfer of data among these components can
result in a mishandling of non- Latin- 1 data.
Getting the data from the keyboard to the
browser ( Path A). In simplified form, a user
presses a key on a keyboard and a character
appears on the screen. But, what if the user wants
a character that doesn’t appear on the keyboard?
At this point, several options are available.
The user can switch to an alternate keyboard.
For instance, Windows supports a mechanism
whereby the keyboard is treated as if it were
covered in characters from a different language.
It is up to the user to know what character is sent
when a particular key is pressed. For those
familiar with the keyboard layout for the alternate
language, this works well.
The user can also use the Character Map utility
supplied with Windows to select Unicode
characters that can then be pasted into the target
cataloging record. This works well when only a
few characters are needed that aren’t available on
the keyboard.
OCLC has also developed a simple tagging
mechanism to allow users of ASCII keyboards to
enter non- ASCII data. The technique uses a two-or
three- letter mnemonic between vertical bars to
represent the desired character. For instance,
| ma| will result in a macron being inserted into
the text. This technique is available for characters
from the USM- 94 characterset but not for the
entire Unicode characterset. ( Details of this
technique are described in the OCLC document:
Diacritics and Special Characters.)
OCLC is also investigating software that
supports the direct entry of CJK data into
Windows applications. There are undoubtedly
other techniques available as well.
Moving the data from the browser to the
CORC system ( Path B). Data sent by the
browser to CORC is encoded in a hypertext
transport protocol ( HTTP) message. HTTP
messages have two parts: a header and a body.
The header is always encoded with 7- bit ASCII
characters. This approach is a legacy from some
of the old systems that originally moved data over
the Internet.
The body of the message can contain 8- bit data
from any characterset. The header of the message
can, but often doesn’t, indicate the characterset
used to encode the data in the body. If it doesn’t
provide the name of the characterset, then the
HTTP server makes a local characterset
assumption. This is usually Latin- 1.
But what if the user has entered a character
not available in Latin- 1, or another characterset
being used by the browser? The browser will
usually encode this data by replacing the
character with a ‘#’, followed by the decimal
value of the character in the Unicode
characterset, followed by a ‘;’. For example, a
Greek capital letter epsilon would be encoded as
‘# 917;’. Another option open to the browser is to
send the character as an HTTP entity. In this case,
an epsilon could be sent as ‘& epsilon;’. This
option, like the OCLC vertical bars for data entry,
is only available for the limited number of
characters for which an HTTP entity reference
has been defined.
Yet another option would be for the browser
to switch to the UTF- 8 characterset. This solution
allows the browser to send all the characters in
the Unicode characterset in a compact form. But
browsers do not do this by default.
A Getting the data from the keyboard to the browser
B Moving the data from the browser to the CORC system
C Moving the data from CORC into the Pears Engine
D Sending searches from CORC to the Z39.50 server
E Moving the data from the Z39.50 server to the Pears Engine
F Getting the data into and out of the database
G Moving the data from Pears to the Z39.50 server
H Moving the data from the Z39.50 server to CORC
I Moving the data from CORC to the Browser
J Displaying the data on the screen
R E S E A R C H
OCLC Newsletter January/ February 2000 25
Interpreting the User’s Data
Once the HTTP message reaches the server, the
CORC application software takes over. It must
interpret the data in the body of the HTTP
message and convert it to Unicode. To do this
conversion, it must have some idea of how the
user’s data has been encoded. If the browser did
not provide an explicit characterset name in the
HTTP header, then it will assume that the Latin- 1
characterset was used. If Latin- 1 wasn’t used,
then the data will be misinterpreted.
If the characterset was correctly
detected/ inferred, then the application software
must know how to interpret the characters that
were outside the characterset. Were they vertical-bar
encoded, Unicode- decimal- value- encoded,
HTTP- entity referenced or was some other
method used? Guessing the wrong technique
could cause the data to be misinterpreted.
To avoid misinterpreting the encoding
technique, CORC asks users to enter their
preferred encoding technique into their user
profile. With this information, the application
software will not have to infer the encoding
technique. This solution is helpful at data entry
time and critical at data display time.
Moving the data from CORC into the Pears
Engine ( Path C). This step is the easy part.
Both CORC and Pears are Java applications. Java
uses Unicode internally for all text data. Since
CORC converted the user’s data into Unicode in
the previous step, the record can simply be
passed to an embedded Pears object, which stores
the record into the database.
Sending searches from CORC to the
Z39.50 server ( Path D). Z39.50 is a protocol
for doing searches and record retrievals. Z39.50
defines how queries are encoded. Only recently
has the Z39.50 community established rules for
handling charactersets. Previously, Latin- 1 was
assumed.
Computer code has been added to OCLC’s
Z39.50 client embedded in CORC and to our
Z39.50 server to negotiate UTF- 8 as the
characterset for all text data, including queries.
Changes were made to nearly every Z39.50
module. Every time a piece of text data is added
to or removed from a Z39.50 message, OCLC
must ensure that we are using the negotiated
characterset.
Moving the data from the Z39.50 server to
the Pears Engine ( Path E). As in Path C, Pears
is a module embedded in the Z39.50 server.
Unicode is native to the Java environment, so
Unicode data is no problem.
Getting the data into and out of the
database ( Path F). The main issue here is the
conversion from Unicode data in Java to UTF- 8
data stored on disk. Since this approach is the
only character conversion being made, this
conversion is straightforward.
Moving the data from Pears to the Z39.50
server ( Path G). As in Paths C and E, this path is
not a problem.
Moving the data from the Z39.50 server to
CORC ( Path H). Since UTF- 8 has already been
negotiated for transferring text data, we need only
to be sure to convert the Unicode record to UTF-
8 for transmission and then from UTF- 8 back to
Unicode for manipulation by CORC.
Displaying vs. Editing Records
in CORC
If the record has been retrieved for display, then it
is formatted with the appropriate HTML markup
and sent to the browser. Records to be edited are
more complicated.
OCLC cannot send back characters in the
record that the user cannot edit. If OCLC’s
vertical bar syntax is used to enter non- ASCII
characters, then those characters must be found
in the record and then replaced with the
appropriate character sequences. Once this is
done, the record is formatted and shipped.
Moving the data from CORC to the
Browser ( Path I). While Latin- 1 is the default
characterset for data sent from browsers to
servers, OCLC has explicit control of the
characterset used to send data from our server to
the user’s browser. So, we specify in the HTTP
header that the body of the message is encoded in
UTF- 8. Then we simply convert the formatted
Unicode record to UTF- 8 and send it to the
browser.
Displaying the data on the screen ( Path J).
On the whole, the newer browsers are pretty
smart. As they get our UTF- 8 characters out of
our HTTP message, they convert them to
Unicode. They look up the Unicode character in
the font that they are using for display. If the
character is not in the font, then they can do one
of two things:
· Their first option is to give up. When that hap-pens,
they display a nonsense character on the
screen. That is usually a small square box, but
sometimes it is a question mark.
26 OCLC Newsletter January/ February 2000
· If they’re persistent, they can use the value of
the Unicode character to determine the lan-guage
group that the character came from and
try to add that group to the font or find
another font that has that group. If the
browser can add to the font or get a new font,
then the user will see messages pass across the
screen describing the progress of that process.
The final result is either a version of the char-acter
in some font or the nonsense character.
Where OCLC has control of the system, we are
reasonably certain of our solution. We have been
testing our software for some time now. The
uncertainty is with the browsers and the user’s
data entry solutions. There may be a great deal of
variation in how these components behave, and
only time and experience will provide the
answers to those questions.— Ralph LeVan is
consulting research scientist, OCLC Office of
Research.
Meeting the challenges of digital preservation:
The OAIS reference model
by Brian Lavoie
Digital information offers
both opportunities and
challenges for libraries in
their traditional role as
custodians of society’s
accumulated knowledge.
While embodying clear
advantages— precise
replication, machine
processing, online content delivery— information
in digital form also introduces a host of difficulties
with regard to access and preservation. The life
span of digital storage media can be surprisingly
short, and the rapid evolution of rendering
technologies can impede future access. The
advantages and disadvantages of digital
information have been well documented in
numerous sources.
What is required to preserve and maintain
access to digital information over the long term?
This question is still far from being satisfactorily
answered, but a recent initiative by NASA’s
Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems
offers common ground for discussion. The Open
Archival Information System ( OAIS) reference
model is a conceptual framework for an archival
system dedicated to preserving and maintaining
access to digital information over the long term.
The purpose of the reference model is to increase
awareness and understanding of concepts
relevant for archiving digital objects, especially
among nonarchival institutions; elucidate
terminology and concepts for describing and
comparing data models and archival architectures;
expand consensus on the elements and processes
endemic to digital information preservation and
access; and create a framework to guide the
identification and development of standards.
Although the OAIS is sufficiently general to
encompass archives of physical as well as digital
objects, it is in the context of the latter that the
OAIS obtains its impetus. The reference model has
been well- received by a diverse community of
institutions interested in the long- term
preservation of digital information. A number of
digital initiatives in the library community, such as
the CEDARS, PANDORA and NEDLIB projects, have
either adopted the OAIS model as the conceptual
framework behind their digital preservation
efforts, or have been informed by its conclusions.
The OAIS reference model is currently a draft
International Standardization Organization ( ISO)
standard and is expected to become a full- fledged
standard in the future. As such, it is likely that the
OAIS will be a highly visible component of the
ongoing effort to address the challenges of
preserving digital information.
Background
The Consultative Committee for Space Data
Systems ( CCSDS) was established in 1982 to
provide an international forum for space agencies
interested in the collaborative development of
standards for data handling in support of space
research. In 1990, CCSDS entered into a
cooperative agreement with Subcommittee 13
( space data and information transfer systems)
under Technical Committee 20 ( aircraft and
space vehicles) of the ISO, whereby CCSDS
recommendations would undergo normal ISO
review and voting and, eventually, evolve into
ISO standards.
At the request of the ISO, CCSDS assumed the
task of coordinating the development of archive
standards for the long- term storage of digital data.
To initiate this process, a reference model was
developed to establish common terms and
R E S E A R C H
R E S E A R C H
OCLC Newsletter January/ February 2000 27
concepts, provide a framework for elucidating the
significant entities and relationships among entities
in an archive environment, and serve as the
foundation for the development of standards
supporting the archive environment. CCSDS’s
efforts resulted in the release of the OAIS reference
model draft recommendation in May 1999.
Open Archival Information System
An OAIS is understood to mean any organization
or system charged with the task of preserving
information over the long term and making it
accessible to a specified class of users ( known as
the Designated Community). The use of the word
“ open” in OAIS refers to the fact that the model
and future recommendations associated with the
model are developed in open forums; it does not
make any presuppositions concerning the level of
accessibility of information in the archive.
An OAIS- type archive is expected to meet
certain minimum responsibilities:
· negotiate and accept appropriate information
from information producers
· obtain sufficient control of the information to
ensure long- term preservation
· determine the scope of the Designated
Community
· ensure the information is understandable by
the Designated Community without the assis-tance
of the information producers
· follow documented policies and procedures to
ensure the information is preserved against rea-sonable
contingencies, and to enable the infor-mation
to be disseminated as authenticated
copies of the original or as traceable to the
original
· make the information available to the
Designated Community
The OAIS reference model details a conceptual
design for an archive, including its primary
components and their associated functions and
relationships, to support these requirements.
The OAIS Environment
The reference model’s specification of the
environment for an OAIS- type archive is shown
in Figure 1.
The OAIS environment is derived from the
interaction of four entities: producers,
consumers, management and the archive itself.
Producers supply the information that the archive
preserves. Consumers use the preserved
information. A special class of consumers is the
Designated Community— the subset of consumers
who are expected to understand the archived
information. Management is the entity
responsible for establishing the broad policy
objectives of the archive ( e. g., determining
what types of information are to be archived,
identifying funding sources, etc.). The
management entity does not include the day- to-day
administration of the archive; this task is
performed by a functional entity within the
archive itself.
Here are two sample environments, drawn
from two real- world archives and described in
terms of the OAIS concepts depicted in Figure 1:
Sample Environment I:
Archive: Planetary Data System ( planetary sci-ence
data sets)
Management: National Aeronautics and Space
Administration ( NASA)
Producers: NASA flight projects
Designated Community: planetary science
community
Sample Environment II:
Archive: Electronic and Special Media Records
Services Division ( U. S. federal records in
formats designed for computer processing)
Management: National Archives and Records
Administration
Producers: U. S. government agencies
Designated Community: general public
The OAIS Information Model
An OAIS- type archive incorporates the
information model shown in Figure 2.
Information is understood to mean any form of
knowledge that can be exchanged. In the context
of the OAIS, information can exist in two forms:
either as a physical object ( e. g., a paper document,
a soil sample), or as a digital object ( e. g., a PDF file,
a TIFF file). These two types— physical or digital—
may be referred to collectively as the data object.
P r o duc e r
M a n a g e m e n t
C o n s um e r
O A I S
( a r ch i v e )
Figure 1
R E S E A R C H
28 OCLC Newsletter January/ February 2000
Interpretation of the data object as meaningful
information by the archive’s Designated
Community is achieved through the combination
of the Designated Community’s knowledge base,
and the representation information associated
with the data object. Each individual ( or class of
individuals, in the case of a Designated
Community) has a knowledge base, which is used
to understand and interpret information. For
example, a Designated Community consisting of
Java programmers is expected to have the
knowledge base to understand information in the
form of Java source code.
The knowledge base of the Designated
Community is not always sufficient to fully
understand the archived information. In this
event, the data object must be supplemented by
representation information so the data object can
be fully understood by the Designated
Community. For example, if the Designated
Community consists of all programmers, rather
than Java programmers specifically, then
information pertaining to Java syntax and
programming conventions is necessary for this
class of consumers to fully understand the
archived data object ( Java source code).
The combination of the data object, the
Designated Community’s knowledge base, and
the representation information results in an
information object representing “ meaningful
information” to the Designated Community.
Clearly, meaningfulness is predicated on the
definition of the Designated Community the
archive serves.
An information package is composed of four
types of information objects: Content Information,
Preservation Description Information, Packaging
Information and Descriptive Information. Content
Information is the primary information of
interest— the data object and its associated
representation information. Preservation
Description Information ( PDI) contains
information necessary to adequately preserve
the Content Information it is associated with.
In particular, PDI would include provenance
information, unique identifiers for the Content
Information and information validating the
authenticity of the Content Information ( such
as a checksum or digital signature). Packaging
Information binds the components of the
information package into an identifiable entity,
while Descriptive Information facilitates access to
the information package via the archive’s search
and retrieval tools.
Within the OAIS model, three types of
information package are identified: the
Submission Information Package ( SIP), which is
sent from the information producer to the
archive; the Archive Information Package ( AIP),
which is the information package actually stored
by the archive; and the Dissemination Information
Package ( DIP), which is the information package
transferred from the archive in response to a
request by a consumer.
The Functional Model of the OAIS
Within the OAIS entity ( Figure 1), five functional
units are identified ( shown in Figure 3).
The Ingest function is responsible for
receiving information from producers and
preparing it for storage and management within
the archive. More specifically, the Ingest entity
accepts information from producers in the form
of SIPs, performs quality assurance checks on the
SIP, generates an AIP from one or more SIPs and
extracts Descriptive Information from the AIPs
K n o w l e d g e
B a s e
R e p r e s e n t a t i o n
I n f o r m a t i o n
D a t a
O b j e c t
I n f o r m a t i o n
O b j e c t
I n f o r m a t i o n
P a ck a g e
D i g i t a l
O b j e c t
P hy s i c a l
O b j e c t
A r ch i v e
I n f o r m a t i o n
P a ck a g e
D i s s e m i n a t i o n
I n f o r m a t i o n
P a ck a g e
S u b m i s s i o n
I n f o r m a t i o n
P r e s e r v a t i o n P a ck a g e
D e s c r i p t i o n
I n f o r m a t i o n
D e s c r i p t i v e
I n f o r m a t i o n
C o n t e n t
I n f o r m a t i o n
P a ck a g i n g
I n f o r m a t i o n
Figure 2
R E S E A R C H
OCLC Newsletter January/ February 2000 29
( metadata for search and retrieval, thumbnail
images for browsing, etc.). Finally, the Ingest
function transfers the newly created AIPs to
Archival Storage and the associated Descriptive
Information to Data Management.
The Archival Storage function handles the
storage, maintenance and retrieval of the AIPs
held by the archive. These responsibilities
include receiving new AIPs from the Ingest
function and assigning them to permanent
storage according to various criteria ( media
requirements, expected utilization rates, etc.),
migrating AIPs to new media as required, error
checking, implementing disaster recovery
strategies, and providing copies of requested AIPs
to the Access function.
The Data Management function coordinates
the Descriptive Information pertaining to the
archive’s AIPs, in addition to system information
used in support of the archive’s operation. In
particular, the Data Management function
maintains and administers the database
containing this information; executes query
requests received from the Access function and
generates result sets to be returned to the
requestor; creates reports in support of the
Ingest, Access or Administration functions; and
performs updates on the Data Management
database, including the addition of new
Descriptive Information received from Ingest or
new system data received from Administration.
The Administration function manages the day-to-
day operation of the archive. This includes
negotiating submission agreements with
information producers and performing system
engineering, access control and customer services.
The Administration function also performs regular
audits of SIPs to assess their compliance with the
submission agreement, and develops policies and
standards related to the system’s data standards
( e. g., data format standards, documentation
requirements, storage, migration and security
policies). This function also serves as an interface
between the archive and two components of the
OAIS environment: management and the
Designated Community ( Figure 1).
The Access function helps consumers to identify
and obtain descriptions of relevant information in
the archive, and delivers information from the
archive to consumers. This function involves the
provision of a single user interface to the archive’s
holdings for both search and retrieval purposes;
generating a DIP in response to a user request by
obtaining copies of the appropriate AIP( s) from
Archival Storage; obtaining relevant Descriptive
Information from Data Management in response to
a query; and finally, delivering the DIP or query
result set to consumers.
The five OAIS functional entities manage the
flow of information from information producers
to the archive, and from the archive to
consumers. Taken together, they identify the key
processes endemic to most systems dedicated to
preserving digital information. It is likely that a
digital archive will contain functional
components similar to those described above,
although the specific implementation will differ
from archive to archive.
Standardization and AWIICS
The environment, information model and
functional entities of an OAIS- type archive
interact to form a broad conceptual framework
characterizing the primary entities, relationships
and processes of an archive dedicated to the
preservation of digital information.
Implementation of this framework requires the
elucidation and integration of standards, policies
and procedures that permit the archive to meet
its specific objectives, in addition to the OAIS
minimum responsibilities listed above.
A r ch i v a l
S t o r a g e
A cc e s s
M A N A G E M E N T
P
R
O
D
U
C
E
R
C
O
N
S
U
M
E
A dm i n i s t r a t i o n R
A r ch i v e
I n f o r m a t i o n
P a ck a g e
A r ch i v e
I n f o r m a t i o n
P a ck a g e
D e s c r i p t i v e
I n f o r m a t i o n
D e s c r i p t i v e
I n f o r m a t i o n
S u b m i s s i o n
I n f o r m a t i o n
P a ck a g e
I n g e s t
R e s ul t S e t
D i s s e m i n a t i o n
I n f o r m a t i o n
P a ck a g e
D a t a M a n a g e m e n t
Figure 3
R E S E A R C H
30 OCLC Newsletter January/ February 2000
The OAIS initiative is moving forward with
efforts to explore possible areas for
standardization within the framework of the
reference model. In support of this objective, the
Archival Workshop on Ingest, Identification, and
Certification Standards ( AWIICS) was convened in
College Park, Maryland, in October 1999. The
purpose of the workshop was to develop an initial
agenda for pursuing standardization in the areas of
ingest ( interaction between the archive and the
data producer), identification ( establishing a
system of permanent, unique identifiers for
archived digital objects) and certification
( development of accreditation policies, protocols,
etc., to establish the authenticity, quality and
usefulness of an archive’s holdings).
An important goal of the workshop was to
determine who among the attendees would be
interested in participating in working groups
dedicated to pursuing standardization in the areas
of ingest, identification and certification.
Response from the AWIICS attendees was
positive, and groups are expected to form and to
begin meeting regularly in the near future.
Why OAIS?
Digital information affects institutions of all kinds,
from libraries and archives to corporations and
government agencies. A point raised in the
reference model documentation is worth repeating
here: that digital preservation issues affect all
institutions managing information in digital form,
including those that do not perceive themselves as
performing any type of formal archiving function.
The AWIICS conference included representatives
from government agencies, libraries, archives,
corporations and universities.
Because digital preservation affects such a
diverse community, it is useful to distill the issue
down to an elemental set of concepts,
relationships and processes common to a wide
cross- section of digital preservation activities.
These reference points serve as the common
ground from which joint discussion and mutually
beneficial collaboration can proceed. The OAIS
reference model elucidates the functions and
processes common to nearly all digital
preservation environments.
The development of standards in support of
the OAIS reference model may serve to promote
interoperability among digital libraries, archives
and other institutions maintaining digital
information over the long term. This is especially
significant if it can achieve cooperative efforts
between institutions that in the past saw no
opportunities for such activity; or, if they did, had
no practical means of exploiting them.
Widespread adoption of the OAIS framework
could also have potential economic benefits.
Standardization across common entities and
processes opens the door for cost reduction
through shared system components. In addition,
standardization promotes the development of
broad markets for vendors to support, as systems
move from costly customized products and services
toward less- expensive standardized versions.
It is not yet clear whether the OAIS initiative
will be the consensus approach to the long- term
maintenance of digital information. It seems
likely, however, that the approach that does
emerge, whether based on the OAIS or some other
model, will follow a similar development path as
the OAIS, with an emphasis on broad participation
in open forums. At the very least, the OAIS is
laying important foundations for a coordinated
and widely applicable solution to the challenges of
digital preservation. Active participation in this
effort by libraries and librarians will likely yield
substantial benefits, both to the library community
and to the OAIS initiative.
More Information
The OAIS reference model, proceedings from
AWIICS, and other material related to the
preservation of digital information is available at
the “ U. S. Efforts Towards ISO Archiving Standards”
Web site at < http:// ssdoo. gsfc. nasa. gov/ nost/
isoas/ us/ overview. html>.— Brian Lavoie is
associate research scientist, OCLC Office of
Research.
R E S E A R C H
OCLC Newsletter January/ February 2000 31
by Lisa Stickley
While we are all aware of
rapid changes in technology,
we may all perceive these
changes differently,
according to Vicki O’Day, a
doctoral student at the
University of California,
Santa Cruz. She came to
OCLC Nov. 16 to discuss
“ Information Ecologies and Digital Libraries” as
part of the OCLC Distinguished Seminar Speaker
series.
Ms. O’Day defines information ecologies as
systems of people, practices, technologies and
values in local environments. Her goal is to
change the way people look at technology and
the social practices surrounding its use.
Ms. O’Day has worked as a researcher in
human- computer interaction for 15 years, and has
had specific interest in the relations between
technology and social life, and the way values are
involved in technology choices.
She is co- author, with Bonnie Nardi, of
Information Ecologies: Using Technology with
Heart, Boston: MIT Press, 1999.
Ms. O’Day began her presentation discussing
information ecologies as complex and diverse,
not unlike their biological counterparts. She
suggests that we need to “ gaze across disciplinary
boundaries” as we evaluate new technologies and
practices and how we use them in our daily work
and life.
So how do we evaluate, design and integrate
new technologies and social practices? Ms. O’Day
believes that there are several reasons why this is
difficult to do. She suggests that we are
surrounded by the rhetoric of inevitability which
states that technological change is inevitable. The
two extremes are uncritical acceptance of the
technology or total rejection, and both suggest
that we have no voice in these changes.
Ms. O’Day said uncritical acceptance of
technology assumes that the future of technology
is known “ by the experts,” and that non-technologists
and non- designers have no role in
designing technology. However, by using an
“ ecological perspective,” we can look at how a
shared activity is perceived by all the players that
participate, such as a client information seeker
and a reference librarian. She suggests that only
by looking beyond the boundaries of profession
and expertise will we have a complete picture.
Ms. O’Day discussed metaphors for technology
and said they can be used to guide our questions,
conversations and criteria for success. Four
metaphors she has identified for technology are:
a tool, an assistant, a system and an ecology.
When we look at technology as a tool we see
that it is good for accomplishing tasks and
extending our capabilities. Tools are under the
control of the user. Some examples of tools are
browsers, spreadsheets and e- mail. Some of the
factors that we need to take into account when
examining tools are skill level and usability, as well
as productivity. Tools may be a necessity, but as a
metaphor for technology they leave out the social,
organizational and political context of its use.
When looking at technology as an assistant, we
think of someone acting on our behalf, but this
focuses on the individual and excludes others in
the local environment.
The system metaphor causes us to think of our
involvement with technology. This introduces
concerns about the technology’s autonomy,
neutrality and comprehensibility. What would the
social implications be? Who will be responsible?
Can we control it? These are just a few of the
questions that may arise as we think about the
interrelationships and interdependence of
technologies. One of the key issues about
technology as a system metaphor is that while it
looks at the “ big picture,” it misses a sense of the
local and particular.
The final metaphor Ms. O’Day discussed was
information ecology. An information ecology is a
system of people, technology, practices and
values in a local setting. She said an information
ecology is not a way of doing business but
another way to speak. We all belong to several
information ecologies such as schools, libraries,
doctor’s offices and workplaces. We see the
interdependencies, local variations and influences
when we talk about information ecologies, but
one of the key points that is often left out of the
discussion is values. Values are important for
knowing why we use technology as well as how
to use the technology.
The characteristics of a biological ecology are
diversity, locality, keystone species and co-evolution.
Ms. O’Day said these characteristics
could also be applied to the digital library
information ecology.
Changing the way people look at information technology
Vicki O’Day, doctoral
student at the University
of California, Santa Cruz
R E S E A R C H
32 OCLC Newsletter January/ February 2000
Diversity in a digital library means many
people and many tools. Any technology can be
used in a variety of ways, and any person engages
with a variety of technologies. Questions that
should be explored include: Who makes digital
libraries work? Who shapes content and access?
What experiences can be used as a resource?
What are the paths to a digital library collection,
and what are the complementary low- tech tools?
She said the way users move between these tools
can help us build bridges between the digital and
physical worlds.
Issues of locality include: Where are the
boundaries of the digital library, and what are the
local adaptations? How could digital libraries
appear differently in different contexts, such as at
a senior center, a school, a doctor’s office, a law
office or a business? How could multiple digital
libraries be taken apart and recombined in new
ways to support specialized users and activities?
At the moment, library content and access are
bundled together, but what would happen if they
were unbundled? Some possible results would be
an online version of a reading room or an online
collection of labor law from a number of different
resources.
The concept of keystone species explores the
idea that although they may be invisible at first
glance, the keystone species is often the
mediator, the technology translator, the localizer
and the “ filler- in of gaps” in the local information
ecology. Some examples of this would be
librarians and also teachers who bridge the gap
between technology and teaching.
Co- evolution is the mutual adaptation of tools
and practices. “ The Internet is having a profound
impact on tools of librarians,” said Ms. O’Day. In
her research, she has found many “ old” needs that
have still not been met. There are many new
tools, yet the integration is missing. How will the
new tools have to inter- operate with the old
tools? How will digital libraries co- exist with
physical libraries, and how can the resources
point to each other? These are some of the
questions that need to be answered, she said.
Ms. O’Day said she would like to see more user
studies that go out into “ real world situations,” and
she would like to do more studies in public
libraries. She said she believes we need to
understand better what online access is really
about, and we have a responsibility to integrate
the new technologies and practices in our
personal and professional lives.— Lisa Stickley
is administrative secretary, OCLC Office of
Research.
• • •
L I B R A R I E S , U . S . N E T W O R K S A N D O C L C
In my first year at OCLC, I visited all 16 of our U. S. regional network affiliates to
meet with their leadership and staffs. During many of these visits, I was also
able to meet with librarians whose institutions are members of both their
networks and OCLC. I made this concerted effort to be out and about with
networks and libraries so I could see the OCLC community firsthand. What I
saw was impressive.
While no two of our regional networks are exactly alike, they are very much
alike in their commitment to cooperation, to superior customer service, and to
providing libraries with innovative services. Like OCLC, they are nonprofit
organizations with public purposes.
The OCLC/ regional network relationship began in 1970 with the Pittsburgh Regional Library
Center ( now part of PALINET), a year before the online shared cataloging system was introduced.
Today, approximately 99.9 percent of all libraries participating in OCLC in the United States do so
through a regional network. Regional networks are a key part of our vision, which is to make
OCLC the leading global library cooperative, helping libraries serve people by providing
economical access to knowledge through innovation and collaboration.
As regional networks and OCLC enter the 31st year of serving
libraries together, our unique partnership remains both strong and full
of promise. We at OCLC are proud of our relationship with
our regional network partners, who continue to add
value for libraries. We look forward to working
with them in the future as we continue to
pursue our shared goals of furthering
access to the world’s information
and reducing library costs.
— Jay Jordan is president and
chief executive officer,
OCLC.
U. S. Networks and OCLC:
A partnership that works
L I B R A R I E S , U . S . N E T W O R K S A N D O C L C
34 OCLC Newsletter January/ February 2000
The power of cooperation
by Susan Olson
For more than 25 years,
OCLC- affiliated U. S. regional
networks and OCLC have
worked together with
libraries to realize the
benefits of library
cooperation. We share this
long history because we
share common missions, a
commitment to libraries, and a belief in the
power of cooperation. The section that follows is
not meant to provide a complete overview of
each U. S. regional network but rather to provide a
“ snapshot” of the variety of activities under way
to help libraries meet the challenges of the 21st
century through cooperation.
Cooperation yields some impressive service
statistics. Each of the 16 networks has an
agreement with OCLC to provide profiling,
training, support, billing and up- to- date
information about OCLC products and services to
their member libraries. In fiscal year 1998/ 99, the
networks and service centers ( OCLC Pacific and
OCLC/ WLN Pacific Northwest Service Center)
devoted 182 full- time equivalent staff to help
libraries obtain the benefits of OCLC products
and services, trained 14,500 attendees at 1,500
training workshops on OCLC services, and
exhibited OCLC services at 120 conferences and
user group meetings. During this same time,
networks, service centers, and OCLC’s User and
Network Support answered close to 127,000
support calls from libraries. Networks and OCLC
work closely to provide training and support
services to make these results possible.
Cooperation also plays an important role in
OCLC product development. Networks and
service centers nominate OCLC Product Advisory
Committee members and then advise OCLC
directly through the Regional OCLC Network
Directors Advisory Committee ( RONDAC) and
various other OCLC/ network forums. The
advisory committee members review OCLC
product plans and help select libraries to assist
in the development process as test libraries or
participants in user requirement analysis and
usability studies. Several of the following articles
show how libraries, networks and OCLC
cooperate in developing important new
OCLC Newsletter
