WorldCat Local is a next-generation library catalog offered by Online Computer Library Center Inc. (OCLC), and it will replace the Vikat catalog currently used by the Millar Library at Portland State.
Refining the research process
WorldCat Local is a next-generation library catalog offered by Online Computer Library Center Inc. (OCLC), and it will replace the Vikat catalog currently used by the Millar Library at Portland State.
WorldCat Local is a localized version of www.worldcat.org that is configured to reflect all the library’s services at a unique URL to help users with better search results.
Online Computer Library Center Inc.
OCLC is a large, nonprofit information network. OCLC and its member libraries cooperatively produce and maintain WorldCat, the largest online public access catalog in the world. They also work with libraries to provide WorldCat Local.
Orbis Cascade Alliance, a consortium of 36 universities, colleges and community colleges in Oregon and Washington, maintains a Union catalog and borrowing system (Summit) with 9.2 million titles representing 28.7 million items.
OCLC has contracted with EBSCO—a subscription provider for more than 300,000 journals serving more than 50,000 libraries worldwide—to provide indexing of its articles from selected databases.
This will eventually greatly increase the number of articles available through Portland State WorldCat.
Depending on how Millar Library defines its workflows, users are presented with different options for obtaining the material they want. Users in WorldCat Local do not currently see any local item records or local edits not present in WorldCat.
The expenses involved in the transformation to WorldCat Local from Vikat have not been tabulated yet.
Benefits
Portland State WorldCat will help students find books and other items, all in one search. It will cover Portland State’s collections, Summit titles, interlibrary loan titles and many article databases.
It will not include all library databases for technical and contractual reasons.
“Right now, students must search many places to find information at the library,” said Thomas Raffensperger, assistant university librarian for public services. “Moreover, students looking for articles must search multiple databases. I believe that Portland State WorldCat is an important step forward to improving information access.”
Searching with WorldCat Local is easy. It is very similar to Google, with a simple free-text search box. There is also an advanced search option that allows for more precise searching and limiting.
The initial browse display is ordered by a ranking algorithm that gives higher preference to Portland State’s records over those of other consortia partner libraries (the 35 Summit libraries in the Orbis Cascade Alliance) and over those of other WorldCat libraries.
Student opinion
“The old catalog does not provide a search result with good-ranked relevance which means your keywords don’t give you what you expect,” said Shavali Alisher, engineering master’s student, “but the new catalog provides a better-ranked relevance.”
This basic holdings information presents a “Held by: [which library]” statement in the brief results list. When a user selects a specific item to view, the system queries a local or consortia catalog to determine current circulation and information about the availability of the material.
“I feel it’s simpler and timesaving when I want to do a comprehensive search on all the available library resources,” said Harishankar Raghavan, a business administration student at Portland State.
WorldCat Local beta version is available at: portlandstate.worldcat.org
