Libraries provide the foundation
Libraries of all types contribute to WorldCat
Libraries of all types from all over the world contribute to WorldCat records, so the records shared here represent many diverse interests. Every library, museum, or archive that subscribes to an OCLC service receives the membership benefits of the OCLC cooperative. OCLC members range from tiny public libraries in rural areas to major academic libraries spread across multiple buildings in a large city, from specialty libraries with depth in one specific topic to national libraries that encompass a whole nation’s cultural achievements. Each has something unique to share with the world through WorldCat.
Number of WorldCat records enhanced by member libraries:
July 2022–June 20232,354,114
July 2023–June 2024 2,331,715
“Global library cooperation…”
National libraries
National libraries all over the world share their collections through WorldCat. This allows libraries everywhere to connect people with information about many cultures and national identities.
Botswana
The Botswana National Library Service
- WH: 43,988
Canada
Bibliothèque et Archives nationale du Québec
- WH: 2,660,147
- OR: 1,251,552
Library and Archives Canada-Bibliothèque et Archives Canada
- WH: 3,635,770
- OR: 2,718,806
Lesotho
Lesotho National Library and Archives
- WH: 1,932
Trinidad & Tobago
National Library and Information System Authority of Trinidad & Tobago
- WH: 9,828
- OR: 4,813
United Kingdom
- WH: 6,984,189
- OR: 10,849,318
The National Library of Scotland
- WH: 6,444,010
- OR: 2,744,799
- WH: 1,420,483
- OR: 528,462
United States
- WH: 13,842,940
- OR: 13,248,036
- WH: 1,036,967
- OR: 435,704
- WH: 463,484
- OR: 17,974
- WH: 3,763,217
- OR: 3,403,227
WH = Number of WorldCat holdings OR = Number of original records
Data current as of November 2020
Academic libraries
Academic libraries support students and faculty with specialized research on a wide variety of topics. They contribute records to WorldCat for these resources and their unique holdings, such as dissertations, theses, published research papers, and often the data sets that support that research.
Search in one place for resources worldwide
“I think it is very important to get a new area’s culture and language loaded into WorldCat, so then it is exposed to the rest of the world.”
Martha Speirs, Former Director
ADA University, Azerbaijan
Expand your catalog and share with the library community at the same time
“We want to make all of our resources discoverable as quickly as possible. That’s really important to us. And WorldCat query collections save us staff time.”
Margaret Hogarth, Information Resources Acquisitions Team Leader, The Claremont Colleges Library, United States
Public libraries
Public libraries form the centerpiece of their communities by providing a wide variety of services and by archiving local history and genealogical resources. By cataloging their materials in WorldCat, public libraries connect people around the world with resources for job searches, school science projects, book clubs, cooking, and many other topics.
Meet a range of needs with worldwide sharing
“The interaction of WorldShare ILL, MyBib eDoc, and MyBib eL has resulted in a very high degree of automation.”
Claudius Lüthi, Head of IK, Digital Services & Development
Zentralbibliothek Zürich, Switzerland
Share your local history with the world
“The fact that [our collections] can be found through a Google search—it’s not part of the hidden web—was definitely a benefit to [our users].”
Shaun Boyd, Archivist
Douglas County Libraries, United States
Special libraries
Special libraries support distinct organizations, such as a government office, church, corporation, hospital, museum, or research center. These libraries contribute incredibly deep collections to WorldCat on very specific topics that are invaluable to researchers.
Move from cataloging to curating for your users
“We’re putting VIAF numbers into Wikipedia and helping to build those connections between Wikipedia and WorldCat.”
Theresa Embrey, Chief Librarian
Pritzker Military Museum & Library, United States
Facilitate research through group catalogs
“The benefit of this move to WorldCat is how scalable it is.”
Geert-Jan Koot, Head
Rijksmuseum Research Library, Netherlands
OCLC improves WorldCat through cooperative management
The cooperative nature of WorldCat lets libraries participate in OCLC’s continuing expansion and enhancement of WorldCat bibliographic records and collections. Not only can librarians contribute, edit and export WorldCat records, but most can also make changes to core bibliographic data in WorldCat records that other libraries can localize for their own catalogs. Libraries may have different levels of authorization based on their participation in WorldCat.
Catalogers can add records to the WorldCat bibliographic catalog in whatever authorized cataloging guideline or rules their institutions use, including RDA, AACR2, and specialized community standards. They can export records from WorldCat in various MARC and Dublin Core formats to use in library management systems and other systems. OCLC standardizes the data that libraries provide to make the records useful to the whole cooperative.
Sharing materials across borders in Europe
“Searching for information …”
Making WorldCat data work for libraries
OCLC works on behalf of libraries to make high-quality WorldCat data available for libraries and partners all over the world to share and reuse across many systems, sites, and applications. To ensure that WorldCat remains valuable and sustainable, the OCLC Board of Trustees has collaborated with member libraries to develop several policies and guidelines that outline a code of good practice based on shared values, trust, and reciprocity. The OCLC Leaders Council has asked members to follow the community norms set forth in WorldCat Rights and Responsibilities for the OCLC Cooperative when using and transferring individual WorldCat records and aggregated sets of those records.
WorldCat Rights and Responsibilities for the OCLC Cooperative