Attend the WorldCat Metadata API Workshop on Aug 28

If you're asking, "The Metadata what?" right about now, you may want to check out the video that John Chapman, Product Manager, OCLC WorldShare Metadata, and Steve Meyer, our Technical Platform Product Manager, did – it’s a great place to start. Or, if you prefer the details, dive into the WorldCat Metadata API documentation here on Developer Network.

What’s important to know about the WorldCat Metadata API is that, by providing write access to WorldCat, it opens the door to all sorts of new workflows that simply weren’t feasible before. The API helps streamline some day-to-day problems, or so says OHSU and Orbis-Cascade's Kyle Bannerjee. He and I were just talking about a clean up project he did recently using this API to update holdings in WorldCat. In fact, he proclaimed the API to be “easy to use, and it's allowed us to do things in a few minutes that otherwise would have taken weeks of staff time."

Savings weeks of staff time is music to our ears here at your friendly library cooperative. And we also want to save you time in learning about this little gem of a time-saver, the WorldCat Metadata API.

So please plan to join us for the WorldCat Metadata API Workshop at 2pm EDT on 28 August, 2013.

Registration is free and open now.

The online workshop concept is actually something I've been thinking about for ALL of our web services. The idea is a session where, for one of our web services, we pull together the description, use cases, and a brief demo. Mix that with some time for our community members to ask questions, and all in about 1 hour - delivered through WebEx - so we won't take much of your time.

One more thing you should know about this particular webinar: We're spreading the word to catalogers and developers alike, so we're hoping to get a good discussion going about requirements and implementation strategies between the different functionality areas of your library. Bring your tech services staff and watch together if you can!

Our goal is to help you learn as much as possible in as short a time as possible. We pledge to get you what you need, and then get out of the way for your creativity and innovation to take over. John, Steve, and I certainly hope to see you there!

Please reach out--before, during, or after the workshop--and let me know what you think of this new workshop format. You can always reach me at DeveloperNetwork[AT]oclc.org or on Twitter at [AT]oclcdevnet