Re: OCLC (World Cat)

[H-Editor <editor@MAIL.H-NET.MSU.EDU>]

I believe I raised the issue of the incompleteness of OCLC holdings in
WorldCat (esp. through worldcat.org) a few months ago. The situation as to
whose holding are respresented and whose are not is quite opaque. It's
getting better but I find
it very worrisome because of the close linkage of GoogleBooks to
worldcat/local. (And that I can't seem to get DC Public Library into the
mix.

Matthew Gilmore


On Wed, 21 Nov 2007, Jim Hinck wrote:

> I frequently encounter OCLC records without holdings. In several cases I have
> tracked them down to libraries that used to report through RLIN and I have
> just assumed that the holding information would eventually appear when the
> RLIN migration was complete.  Perhaps I was naive.
>
> But what really puzzles me is the situation revealed by C. J. Scheiner's
> recent query regarding copies of Cavallucci's LEXICON VOCUM.  This comes up
> as another unlocated listing in FirstSearch and WorldCat even though the book
> being described is at Harvard (Houghton) and easily found in Hollis.  Is this
> a fluke, or are there many other records from Harvard (or other long-standing
> OCLC libraries) which appear in their own online catalogues but are absent
> from (or unlocated in) FirstSearch?
>
>
> Jim Hinck
> www.vialibri.net
>
>
> At 11:29 PM 11/20/2007, you wrote:
> > Hello Will:
> >
> > > There are no holdings attached to that record in OCLC. Therefore, WorldCat
> > > would not list a copy. It looks like Swarthmore entered the record, but
> > > they
> > > deleted their holdings for some reason. I believe it's OCLC's policy not
> > > to
> > > delete records even if all the holdings have been removed.
> > We here ran into the same situation.
> > So to clarify matters I called OCLC support.
> > They do not delete bib records even when there is no holding library.
> > They hope that someone will come around at some point and add a holding
> > eventually.
> >
> > So your assessment is completely on point.
> >
> > ~Allison Rich
> >
> > ********************************
> > "Outside of a dog, a book is probably man's best friend,
> > and inside of a dog, it's too dark to read. - Groucho Marx"
> >
> > Allison Rich
> > Catalogue Librarian
> > John Carter Brown Library
> > Providence, Rhode Island
> > Allison_Rich@brown.edu
> >
> > ********************************