IN PRAISE OF: OCLC
Do you realize that OCLC isn't quite 35 years old yet? It hardly seems possible, given how much it has grown, how far it has extended its services, and how clearly they its visionary leaders have seen the future and done their best to make sure libraries get there first.
I first used OCLC in library school, back in 1977, when its primary chore was still making MARC tapes available, both for cataloging and for verification. The University of Iowa library science students provided the back-up reference service for the state of Iowa at that time, and one of our most frequent tasks was verifying whether a book existed. First we checked OCLC, and then if need be, checked older sources like Cumulative Book Index or the original Library of Congress catalogs. In 1977, we could verify perhaps half the titles in OCLC. A few years later, using OCLC's interlibrary loan system, I could find about 80% of the titles I searched for. Now if I don't find it in OCLC, I assume it either doesn't exist, or I have an incorrect author or title. Along the way, it made its search system much more user-friendly -- do any of you remember the old title and author logarithms we used to have to use?
I was in charge of interlibrary loan when OCLC introduced the I.L.L module in 1981, and if I remember correctly, my first OCLC loan transaction was number 767. OCLC has now made possible more than 100 MILLION interlibrary loans.
It helped accomplish an even bigger sea change, though. When I first became a librarian, interlibrary loan was a service reserved for scholars, scientists, and, perhaps, Ph.D. students -- in short, people who could demonstrate that they were worthy of the enormous effort involved.
Because of OCLC, it's not such an enormous effort anymore -- it's easy to locate a book and request it online, though of course the process of finding, packaging, delivering, and record-keeping still took time (OCLC was thoughtful enough to add a package for keeping track of our I.L.L statistics). Furthermore, it's made it easy for ordinary users to see that a book is available, and they see no reason why we shouldn't get it for them. Which means OCLC has greatly democratized interlibrary loan service, allowed us to serve ALL our patrons better.
Even before the web came along, the folks at OCLC began offering databases to libraries through FirstSearch. It was the right pricing model -- a modest cost per search, and the more searches we bought up front, the better that per search price got. No communications line charges, just the flat search fee. That meant that even small libraries were able to afford indexes online that were prohibitively expensive if we paid upfront for the volumes (which were harder to use anyway).
OCLC's leaders also realized very early on that library users would rather see full-text articles than citations, and began to offer several full-text databases. It also backed up the indexing and abstracting services with partnerships with full-text delivery services.
And then they began to sell massive blocks of FirstSearch searches to Illinois and presumably other state governments, enabling the states to offer their citizens what looked very much like free searching, and free full-text documents by way of their libraries.
Many organizations would rest comfortably on laurels as lush and green as these. But OCLC has continued to offer new services. Part of the reason for the enormous expansion of WorldCat in such a short time is the OCLC conversion services, which have made it comparatively easy and cheap for libraries to input their older holdings. OCLC is also working on numerous preservation projects, offering libraries assistance on microfilming and digitizing; it keeps the backup file for the JSTOR project.
OCLC makes it possible for libraries to download individual holdings, and create union lists and other databases. (When our local consortium began to create its shared catalog, we were able to download the OCLC Iowa tapes as a base from which to start pulling matching records.)
So perhaps it's greedy of me to suggest one more thing OCLC could do -- it's always easy to spend other people's money. My modest proposal is that they should offer WorldCat free on their web site.
Every library would benefit from it, including those libraries too small to dream of OCLC membership. Every library's patrons would benefit by being able to search through this massive catalog of books owned by libraries all over the world. The job of preserving the written record would benefit from it, because at every library, before discarding a volume, staff could check to make sure they're not discarding the only extant copy.
And you know what? OCLC could benefit from it. It would lose the individual charges for each search, but I think it would make up the difference by using each search to publicize the other OCLC databases. It's the Internet business model -- make money by giving stuff away for free. Searches could even be set up by state so that in states where FirstSearch fees have been paid upfront, users could be alerted that the other databases were available to them through their libraries. Sounds like a win-win proposition to me.
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MY SEARCH CHALLENGES FOR THE WEEK
Knowing how to search, and where you're likely to find the answers, is not just a useful professional skill, it's a valuable life skill. Hardly a day goes by that I don't conduct at least one search on the net or the databases available to me. Often it's because I need to check my facts before I write a column -- this week, as I was revising my article "Afraid of Harry Potter" (http://marylaine.com/myword/censor.html) for a magazine for school librarians, I went online to find out what books for younger kids were most frequently challenged.
Often, though, it's out of sheer curiosity. This past week I was having a hard time figuring out when the events took place in a book I was reviewing -- there were hardly any time cues. But the young hero went to a baseball game where the Yankees players included Clint Boyer, Mickey Mantle, Dooley Womack, Horace Clarke, and Ruben Amaro. Searching with just two or three of these names gave me a range of dates, from 1966-1968. But since even before free agency players moved from team to team, in only one year did the Yankees team include ALL those players. I and-ed all five names together in a couple of search engines and came up with the 1966 Yankees.
And Jon Carroll often sends me to the net by closing his columns with a brief tagline from a rock music song. Thanks to my son, I'm no slouch at rock music lyrics myself, but I don't always seem to know the same ones Jon Carroll does. This week he sent me to the search engines with "We're the all-time winners in the all-time loser's game." Found it, too. My excuse for not knowing is that I was never an admirer of the Eurythmics.
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COOL QUOTE
Every once in a while I toss off a line I like a lot, so at the risk of sounding egotistical, I'm quoting myself this week, from an e-mail to a friend when, the day after I wrote the rough draft of a column, I stumbled on an article that filled in a missing piece of data for it:
I truly believe that information HAPPENS to a mind that's got all its antennae out quivering hopefully.
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Bookkeeping Note: If any subscribers have not been getting their issues, I've been getting a lot of e-mails returned because thr addressee's mailboxes are full.
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You are welcome to copy and distribute or e-mail any of my own articles for noncommercial purposes (but not those by my guest writers) as long as you retain this copyright statement:
Ex Libris: an E-Zine for Librarians and Other Information Junkies.
http://marylaine.com/exlibris/
Copyright, Marylaine Block, 2000.
