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Worldwide (English) Change
WorldCat : A global catalog

A global catalog

Become a part of WorldCat, and your library adds its holdings to the world's largest and most comprehensive catalog. With 138 million bibliographic records that represent more than 1 billion individual items held by participating institutions, patrons and Web users find what they're looking for and your staff enjoys high hit rates in their cataloging and resource-sharing activities.

  • Every conceivable physical and electronic format
    WorldCat includes records for books, videos, serial publications, articles, recorded books and music, electronic books, sheet music, genealogical references, cultural artifacts, digital objects, Web sites and much more.
  • Popular, rare and one-of-a-kind resources
    Cataloged works span thousands of years and nearly every form of human expression.
  • 470+ languages from 112 countries and territories
    Many items cataloged in WorldCat cannot be discovered through any other resource. Records are constructed in many languages: WorldCat cataloging supports Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Cyrillic, Devanagari, Greek, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Tamil and Thai scripts, with each script including multiple languages.
  • National catalogs increasingly represented
    OCLC continues to put much more of the "world" in WorldCat by partnering with national libraries from many countries. More than 40 national catalogs including those of Poland, Australia and New Zealand are now or will soon be part of WorldCat.
  • Quality metadata
    Records are maintained cooperatively by catalogers and other information professionals; adhere to international standards; and are vetted by several OCLC and industry quality control programs. Libraries that contribute information to WorldCat are bound by the WorldCat Principles of Cooperation and follow particular guidelines regarding content.
  • Enriched record data helps patrons quickly evaluate relevance
    WorldCat records often feature cover art, tables of contents, author notes, reviews, excerpts and links to related resources available through other subscription information services—so users can decide if it's the correct resource and determine how best to access it.
  • Simplified display of titles available in multiple formats
    WorldCat records collapse multiple expressions of a source work using unique, OCLC-developed algorithms based on the FRBR conceptual model. Users and staff don't have to wade through dozens of records for different versions of a popular title.

Many ways to add your holdings

Your library can choose to submit data directly to WorldCat via a variety of OCLC services, including simple and expert cataloging interfaces, batch processing, and automated cataloging associated with content purchases from OCLC or partnering vendors. Your library may also join or form a consortium or library service group that contributes its holdings collectively to WorldCat.

Your data becomes an important part of a unique commitment

Continuously adding your holdings and other forms of metadata to the WorldCat database is a contribution to the institutional knowledge community worldwide. As libraries cooperatively create and append data to its bibliographic records, WorldCat helps reduce duplication of effort and the costs of cataloging and access to information.

Your investment earns you membership

Cataloging records are not the only contribution libraries can make to the cooperative, but they are the most highly utilized. All libraries that contribute one or more of various types of intellectual capital are considered members and enjoy numerous benefits. Those libraries that contribute all of their cataloging and holdings to WorldCat receive the highest recognition as governing members, along with the privilege of electing delegates to the OCLC Members Council.