Barbara Quint, All of OCLC’s WorldCat Heading Toward the Open Web, Information Today, October 11, 2004. Excerpt: "Excited by the 'resounding success' of the Open WorldCat pilot program, the management of OCLC, the world's largest library vendor, has decided to open the entire collection of 53.3 million items connected to 928.6 million library holdings for 'harvesting' by Google and Yahoo! Search. A letter from Jay Jordan, president and CEO of OCLC, went out to members on Oct. 8. Currently, the Open WorldCat subset database contains about 2 million records, all items held by 100 or more academic, public, or school libraries --some 12,000 libraries all told. The new upgraded Open WorldCat program will automatically include all of the 15,000-plus OCLC libraries that contribute ownership information (holdings) to WorldCat, unless the library asks to have its holdings excluded. In January 2005, Open WorldCat will officially graduate from a pilot program to a permanent 'ongoing program'; however, the database will be open for 'harvesting' to Google and Yahoo! Search as early as late November 2004."
Update. For more on this story, see the links, info, and suggestions by Gary Price and Steven Cohen on ResourceShelf.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/11/2004 04:29:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
