Cornell, State Library of Ohio and University of Delaware to use WorldCat Local as service moves into production

Following results from several pilots, Cornell University Library, the State Library of Ohio and the University of Delaware Library have signed agreements to use WorldCat Local, a new service that combines the cooperative power of OCLC member libraries worldwide with the ability to customize WorldCat.org as a solution for local discovery and delivery services.

WorldCat Local was introduced as a pilot in April 2007. Pilot projects are currently under way to determine interoperability with a variety of systems. University of Washington, Peninsula Library System in California, Libraries in Illinois, The Ohio State University and the University of California Libraries are all currently involved in WorldCat Local pilot projects. WorldCat Local moves from pilot into production in 2008.

WorldCat Local builds on WorldCat.org, which allows Web access to the world’s richest database for discovery of materials held in libraries. Through a locally branded interface, WorldCat Local provides libraries the ability to search the entire WorldCat database and present localized results most accessible to the user. These might include internal special collections, collections shared in a consortium and open access collections.