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OCLC, together with OCLC Global Council and members, is taking the cooperative’s ongoing strategy to help libraries operate and innovate at Webscale to a much broader level with the introduction of OCLC WorldShare, a new platform and a new brand that signals OCLC’s commitment to greater collaboration in library service delivery.

OCLC is launching the OCLC WorldShare Platform, which will enable library developers, partners and other organizations to create, configure and share a wide range of applications that deliver new functionality and value for libraries and their users.

October 31, 2011, Medford, NJ—Information Today, Inc. (ITI) announced the publication of Mob Rule Learning: Camps, Unconferences, and Trashing the Talking Head by author, blogger and Library Journal Mover & Shaker Michelle Boule.

OCLC has added more databases and signed agreements with leading publishers and other providers to add more content and collections to WorldCat Local, the OCLC discovery and delivery service that offers users integrated access to more than 865 million items.

WorldCat Local offers access to books, journals and databases in a variety of formats from a variety of publishers and content providers from around the world; the digital collections of groups like HathiTrust, OAIster and Google Books; open access materials; and the collective resources of libraries worldwide through WorldCat.

OCLC’s Geek the Library community awareness campaign, piloted in 2009 and 2010 and now available to all U.S. public libraries, has received an additional grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The supplementary $726,000 provides ongoing campaign materials and field support for libraries currently running the campaign, and allows OCLC to work with additional public libraries that sign up by March 31, 2012. Funding ensures that participating libraries can use the campaign to reach their local communities through June 2013.

Mohave Community College, in northwest Arizona, recently signed on and Ogeechee Technical College, in Statesboro, Georgia, is now “live” with OCLC Web-scale Management Services (WMS), the Web-based cooperative library management tools for metadata management, acquisitions, circulation, license management and workflow improvement. WorldCat Local, OCLC’s service for discovery, delivery and user self-service, is part of the WMS solution.

OCLC and Ex Libris Group® have signed an agreement that will enable Ex Libris to incorporate the WorldCat Search API into several Ex Libris discovery and delivery services, providing OCLC member libraries access to WorldCat through the Ex Libris Primo® and MetaLib® solutions.

OCLC and HathiTrust have signed an agreement that will allow OCLC to integrate the HathiTrust full-text index into OCLC services, enabling member libraries and their users to more easily discover resources from this important digital collection through WorldCat.

August 30, 2011 — Amigos Library Services is pleased to announce that Mr. Craig Stephenson, City Manager for the City of Ponca City, OK, has been appointed to the Amigos Board of Directors. Mr. Stephenson replaces Mr. Joel Valdez, Tucson, AZ, who was unable to serve. He will serve a one-year term on the Board and be eligible for election next spring to complete the remaining two years of Mr. Valdez’s three-year term.

Writers Conferences Navigate Modern Publishing without Sacrificing Craft
Learn to navigate modern publishing without sacrificing quality of craft. Georgia Writers Association leads the way with two writing events in fall 2011.

DUBLIN, Ohio, August 26, 2011—Today marks the 40th anniversary of the launch of WorldCat, the world’s most comprehensive database of resources held in libraries around the globe.

On August 26, 1971, the OCLC Online Union Catalog and Shared Cataloging system (now known as WorldCat) began operation. That first day, from a single terminal, catalogers at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, cataloged 133 books online. Today, WorldCat comprises more than 240 million records representing more than 1.7 billion items in OCLC member libraries worldwide.