October 27, 2003 — OCLC has announced to
its library members that it will begin testing the
opening of WorldCat records to Google access. The
project will extract a 2 million record subset from
the more than 53 million records in the WorldCat
database. The subset will target the most popular
and widely available books by only selecting records
with a minimum of 100 libraries holding each item.
Searches on Google will retrieve the records and
link through OCLC to library holdings. The move
expands the scope of the Open WorldCat yearlong
pilot project to make library resources available
from non-library Web sites and will “test
the effectiveness of Web search engines in guiding
users to library-owned materials.” (Details
for potential participants can be found at http://www.oclc.org/worldcat/pilot/default.htm.)
The Google/OCLC connection should be active by mid-
to late November.
Over 12,000 academic, public, and school libraries
that have contributed holding records or cataloging
information to OCLC will automatically participate
in the program. Corporate library collections
will not be assumed to participate. Libraries
may withdraw from the project by notifying regional
service providers. Libraries that are not already
part of the pilot project that want to participate
can do so by joining OCLC or an OCLC cooperative
and indicate their desire to join the pilot. Until
the launch of the Open WorldCat pilot, the only
end users that could reach WorldCat records were
required to use FirstSearch, most probably in
a library setting.
The announcement urged OCLC member libraries
to participate in the program in order to increase
the visibility of library collections to current
and potential patrons, as well as enhance the
image of libraries to administrators and funding
agencies and improve the quality of material accessible
from the Web. OCLC began testing Web outlets in
September 2001 when it opened access to WorldCat
records through links to selected online bookseller
sites (e.g. BookPage.com, ABE Books, Alibris for
Libraries, and the Antiquarian Booksellers’
Association of America). Of the four named, only
BookPage offers a “find it at a library”
for any and all searches; the rest only show the
library link when the search has failed to find
the item in the bookseller’s inventory.
Currently, these sites generate some 50,000 library
clickthroughs a month.
After users locate an OCLC record citation from
a Google search or other Open WorldCat Web sites,
clicking on the citation will link to an interface
that requests a ZIP or postal code, state, or
province. This in turn will locate the nearest
libraries holding the item. Country names will
suffice for locations outside the U.S. and Canada.
The interface will also link to local library
Web sites for further information, such as connections
to the local library’s OPAC catalog or a
map with driving directions. OCLC supplies all
the links for libraries and at no extra charge.
Once in a local library’s Web site, users
may search for other items in individual library
collections, but there is no option to search
all of WorldCat.
OCLC launched the project in June 2003 after
a year of extensive consultation with library
and information industry leaders. This consultation
bore out the perception that libraries needed
more visibility on the Web, in particular to reach
people who don’t use their services now.
Analysis of the pilot project will involve extensive
feedback and surveys from participants and focus
groups, as well as looking at click-through statistics.
Participating libraries will receive usage statistics
for the pilot project as part of OCLC’s
analysis of its success. In June 2004, OCLC will
decide whether to expand, continue, or discontinue
the pilot project.
Clearly, the expansion to include OCLC’s
records fits Google’s mission statement
to “organize the world’s information
and make it universally accessible and useful.”
A Google spokesperson pointed to this as part
of the company’s effort to reach beyond
the open Web, as it has, for example, in including
IEEE abstracts. Reports circulate that Google
is in negotiation with several major international
publishers as well.
There’s one problem, however. The programming
algorithms that rank search results involve linguistic
frequency as well as popularity statistics. OCLC
bibliographic records, by Google spidering standards,
are very thin. At this point, Google had nothing
to say on how it will handle the OCLC records
to ensure a “page one” level of visibility
to searchers that corresponds to the quality of
the material.
For the record, such issues may not take first
place in Google’s in-house relevancy rankings
for a while. Google executives are interviewing
representatives of several investment banks preparatory
to launching a projected $15 to $25 billion IPO
next year. A story in the Financial Times
said that Google might set up an online auction
of shares so that millions of users could bid
to own their own piece of the world’s most
popular search engine. Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineWatch
pointed to a Reuters report that only 53 public
offerings have ever exceeded $1 billion, though
Amazon and Yahoo! currently have a value of between
$22 and $26 billion.
Barbara Quint, co-editor with Paula J. Hane
for NewsBreaks, is editor in chief of Searcher,
a columnist for Information Today, and
a longtime online searcher. Her e-mail address is
bquint@mindspring.com.
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