[DCRM-L] Display of holdings in OCLC WorldCat

[Liz OKeefe]

Recently there has been discussion on the ARLIS/NA (Art Libraries of North
America) listserv about the display of holdings in WorldCat. Art librarians
at smaller institutions are frustrated by the fact that the holdings of a
library with a cataloging subscription do not reliably display in WorldCat
unless the library also has a subscription to WorldCat Discovery or to
Firstsearch.

It’s not entirely clear what triggers a display of holdings for a
non-subscribing library.  One librarian wrote:

“Before we paid [for the additional subscription], it appeared that if we
created the Master Record, sometimes our holdings would show [in Worldcat]
but without the hyperlink to our own catalog. If we simply added our
holdings to the record and made some kind of update to the record, it
sometimes showed we had a copy of the item. If we only added our holdings
to the record, it seems that those were most likely to not show up in any
fashion. Just a guess.”

Another librarian noted that holdings for her non-subscribing library do
appear, as a greyed-out display, when searching a title in the
Discovery-based OPAC of another institution (assuming that the other
institution owns a copy of the title).

It is already a stretch for smaller libraries to afford the cataloging
subscription; the cost of an additional subscription is prohibitive, so
these libraries are missing out on one of the main advantages of
participation in a union catalog, as are users of WorldCat.

ARLIS/NA is considering raising this issue with OCLC. It would be helpful
to know if this is also a matter of concern to special collections
librarians. And can anyone on the DCRM-L listserv shed additional light on
what affects the display/non-display of records for non-subscribing
libraries? E.g., is there a reason some master records/updated records
display and not others? Do records for unique items, e.g. archival
collections, manuscripts, art works, behave differently from records for
resources that exist in multiples?

Any comments would be most welcome.

Elizabeth O'Keefe

Member, Cataloging Advisory Committee, ARLIS/NA
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