WorldCat is the manifestation of the creativity and innovation of the staff of OCLC and thousands of librarians. Unique in scale and unparalleled in data quality, WorldCat makes library collections findable and accessible around the world.
OCLC’s team of expert catalogers and data quality specialists constantly enrich WorldCat records with new and corrected information to ensure that WorldCat contains the highest quality records possible. Library staff members also enhance records through the OCLC Cataloging and Metadata Subscription (previously the OCLC Cataloging Subscription), making these records the industry standard for quality.
WorldCat helps you share what makes your library great to make all libraries better.
By enabling libraries to share high-quality library metadata and bibliographic records with each other, WorldCat has helped librarians dramatically reduce the time they spend on original cataloging. Between July 2023 and June 2024, OCLC member librarians copy cataloged 95% of their items from WorldCat, saving an average of 10 minutes per title. These librarians copy cataloged 357,798,128 titles during that time, so they saved around 59 million hours, collectively.
Partner content providers add records to WorldCat—sometimes before a resource is published—so library users can find the information they need as soon as it’s available.
WorldCat supercharges library collections
The resources in your library power “light bulb moments” for learners and researchers every day. WorldCat supercharges your collection by aggregating and enriching your library metadata in its cloud-based infrastructure to power greater collection reach and usage.
Make your collections visible.
Data about library collections, which house some of the most authoritative and unique resources in the world, is difficult to share directly from independent library catalogs. The collaborative nature of WorldCat helps libraries take advantage of linked data opportunities to lessen their workloads and to increase their online presence and discoverability. OCLC continues to explore linked data benefits for discovery, authority control, disambiguation and more as part of our work on numerous standards committees and community projects. OCLC also provides data services and downloadable data sets that help programmers and linked data practitioners create and improve their own applications with WorldCat data.
“Work with libraries...”
“Promise of linked data...”
WorldCat brings together valuable information about collection items, electronic resources and the libraries that make them available.
Provide access to knowledge.
If a library’s materials can’t be found, they can’t be used. WorldCat gives people the ability to view library collections from anywhere in the world, giving them access to a rich assortment of information much deeper than what can be found through a basic internet search. WorldCat plays a vital role in getting library resources in front of people both inside and beyond the library on the popular websites where they begin their searches. Librarians can connect library users to library resources by adding WorldCat records into their existing catalogs or through FirstSearch, WorldCat Discovery and WorldCat.org.
“Natural search processes...”
“More visibility...”
Share your collections.
WorldCat provides the high-quality data that power discovery of library resources and make library collections visible to the largest resource-sharing community in the world. Since WorldCat is the foundation of WorldShare Interlibrary Loan, libraries can easily see the resources available from other libraries, borrow directly from them and share their resources to meet users' needs. WorldCat also allows borrowing libraries to link users directly to articles provided by lending libraries, giving users the instant access they expect.
“See the content we have...”
“Visible to many...”
Prove your value.
Librarians increasingly rely on data to make decisions about the library’s collections and services and to justify those decisions to library stakeholders and funding organizations. Through WorldShare Collection Evaluation, WorldCat helps librarians compare their collections and gather the data they need to analyze their collection development choices. Librarians can compare their analysis to their own usage and circulation statistics through WorldShare Report Designer to make decisions about the library’s priorities. In addition, GreenGlass uses the data in WorldCat to help libraries manage shared print collections.
“Support student learning…”
“Collection-level analysis...”
A bibliographic catalog
Everything that’s available through the library, including books, videos, photos and unique objects
A knowledge base
Connection to the library’s e-resources with options for automatic record updates
A registry of library profiles
Information about the library itself, including location, hours and services provided
“Don’t have to micro-manage...”
Growing every day
WorldCat consists of a bibliographic catalog, e-resource holdings and library location information.
Getting better together
OCLC and libraries worldwide collaborate to ensure WorldCat records are the highest quality possible.
Planning for the future
WorldCat puts library resources in front of researchers and keeps up with changing research habits.
See why data strategy is key
Download the WorldCat brochure
Download the brochure (US Letter)
Download the brochure (A4)