Friday, September 11, 2009

WorldCat Local quick start

Here at Rollins we have been playing with OCLC's Quick Start for WorldCat Local. Playing being the operative word. It is really easy to set this up and it has some interesting potential.

Could this replace our OPAC? With the interesting reframing of our collection within the larger WorldCat collection (once again de-centering our catalog.)

The interface is clean, and includes the nice link to electronic content, and to ILL. I also like the limiting features that are all the rage in library databases these days.

But what is the relationship between this and WorldCat.org? When I search Google I come across WorldCat records. When I click on a record I go to the generic WorldCat record, not the WorldCat Local record. What would OCLC have to do to change that? Because that is true web scale discovery: web search and local retrieval.

2 comments:

Mark Dahl said...

Johnathan,

I think you make a good point about OCLC needing to do a better job of connecting worldcat.org with WorldCat Local, especially in the area of local delivery of the resource.

Here are some of my thoughts on WCL. http://synthesize-specialize-mobilize.blogspot.com/search/label/WorldCat%20Local

Mark

Ethan Freeman said...

This was great to rread