Local WorldCat

OCLC announced yesterday that it is partnering with several libraries (including several in Illinois) to pilot a local version of WorldCat.org. The announcement claims that the local worldcat will be able interoperate with local systems including the local ILS's circulation system and ILL.

The OCLC announcement also discusses plans to start adding article citations to WorldCat. Here is a quote from Bill Jordan, Dean of Libraries at University of Washington (the first library to get Local WorldCat):

"With WorldCat Local, we get enhanced search and display capabilities like faceted browse, FRBR-ized results sets, and enhanced content like reviews and article metadata," said Mr. Jordan. "We bring together all our fulfillment options--electronic, locally held, consortial, and remote--into one interface that still leverages all the 'delivery smarts' that are built into our local and consortial systems. With the addition of article metadata, we begin to see the breakdown of our discovery silos by the aggregation of indexing for book and article content."

This would all seem to have pretty major implications for our thinking about the OPAC, the local catalog, ILS software, electronic resources and consortial catalogs like I-Share's Universal Catalog.