OCLC is a non-profit, membership, computer library service and researchorganization dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the world’s information andreducing the rate of the rise in library costs
…with that phrase “reducing the rate of rise in library costs” — how about flat out reducing library costs, OCLC?
Even OCLC, one ofthe very best retrospective-conversion contractors in the business, isbound to make thousands of typos in the course of a huge projectlike the Harvard “recon.”
"Recon" from RETROCON, a division of OCLC, which retroactively digitized and converted the data on library card catalog cards into digital format from roughly the late 1980s into the 90s.
OCLC owns the largestdatabase of bibliographic information in the world, and it o ers aservice called RETROCON, contracting with libraries to transfer oldcatalog cards to “machine-readable form,” at anywhere from ftycents to six dollars per card.
cards printed by theLibrary of Congress, Baker & Taylor, and OCLC;
In the 21st century, many library card catalog cards were commercially printed by OCLC, Baker & Taylor, and the Library of Congress
https://www.librarything.com/mds
Melvil Decimal System (LibraryThing's equivalent of DDC, apparently in an attempt not to run afoul of the OCLC's Trademark.)
THE COURT: How would you define a catalog?MS. MARTINEZ: So it depends, I think, on thesubscriber, because they can be different, but initiallywhen -- before a customer comes to WorldCat, obviously, theywill have their own records that haven't been touched orenhanced or cared for through the WorldCat process.
I don't know if this is meaningful, but OCLC"s representative describes WorldCat users as "customers" and not "members". I don't know if it is possible for a library to get cataloging services without being a member of OCLC.
Later on in the answer, the lawyer refers to "the consortium" and "subscribers within the consortium".
While libraries pay substantial fees to OCLC and other providers for services including deduplication, discovery, and enhancement, they do not do so with the intent that their records should then be siloed or restricted from re-use. Regardless of who has contributed to descriptive records, individual records are generally not copyrightable, nor is it in the public interest for their use to be restricted.
This is the heart of the matter, and gets to the record use policy debate from the last decade. Is the aggregation of catalog records a public good or a public good? The second sentence—"nor is it in the public interest for their use to be restricted"—is the big question in my mind.
"OCLC Prints Last Library Catalog Cards.” OCLC, October 1, 2015. 44280170. OCLC News Releases 2015 - US. https://cdm15003.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15003coll6/id/386.
OCLC began automated catalog card production in 1971, when the shared cataloging system first went online. Cardproduction increased to its peak in 1985, when OCLC printed 131 million. At peak production, OCLC routinelyshipped 8 tons of cards each week, or some 4,000 packages. Card production steadily decreased since then asmore and more libraries began replacing their printed cards with electronic catalogs. OCLC has printed more than1.9 billion catalog cards since 1971.
OCLC built the world's first online shared cataloging system in 1971
DUBLIN, Ohio, October 1, 2015 —OCLC printed its last library catalog cards today, officially closing the book onwhat was once a familiar resource for generations of information seekers who now use computer catalogs andonline search engines to access library collections around the world.
in 1971, the Ohio College Library Center began printing the text onto the index cards for them.
Librarians either handwrote or typed up their own library card catalog cards until the Ohio College Library Center (OCLC) began printing cards for libraries as a service.
One year ago this month, the final order of library catalog cards was printed by the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) in Dublin, Ohio. On October 2, 2015, The Columbus Dispatch wrote, “Shortly before 3 p.m. Thursday, an era ended. About a dozen people gathered in a basement workroom to watch as a machine printed the final sheets of library catalog cards to be made …”
We attempted this, but ran into the problem that OCLC does not identify books as publishers do (OCLC is far less reliant on ISBNs). Thus the mapping to WorldCat was only partly successful.
I can't believe that OCLC doesn't use ISBNs!