Back WorldCat Afrikaans WorldCat ALS وورلد كات Arabic وورلدكات ARZ WorldCat AST WorldCat (библиографик мәғлүмәт базаһы) Bashkir WorldCat BAR WorldCat BE-X-OLD ওয়ার্ল্ডক্যাট Bengali/Bangla WorldCat BS

WorldCat

WorldCat
Five-color WorldCat emblem, with WorldCat in black letters and OCLC in smaller grey letters
Screenshot
WorldCat homepage as of June 2019
Type of site
Network of library content and services
Available in13 languages[1]
List of languages
  • Chinese (Simplified)
  • Chinese (Traditional)
  • Czech
  • Dutch
  • English
  • French
  • German
  • Italian
  • Korean
  • Japanese
  • Portuguese
  • Spanish
  • Thai
  • Urdu
OwnerOCLC
URLsearch.worldcat.org Edit this at Wikidata
CommercialNo
RegistrationOptional, but some features require registration (such as writing reviews and making lists or bibliographies)
LaunchedJanuary 21, 1998 (1998-01-21) (date of registry of the new domain name; the database has existed since 1971)[2]
Current statusOnline
Content license
Copyright policy
OCLC number756372754

WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions (mostly libraries), in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative.[3] It is operated by OCLC, Inc.[4] Many of the OCLC member libraries collectively maintain WorldCat's database, the world's largest bibliographic database.[5] The database includes other information sources in addition to member library collections.[6] OCLC makes WorldCat itself available free to libraries, but the catalog is the foundation for other subscription OCLC services (such as resource sharing and collection management). WorldCat is used by librarians for cataloging and research and by the general public.

As of December 2021, WorldCat contained over 540 million bibliographic records in 483 languages, representing over 3 billion physical and digital library assets,[4] and the WorldCat persons dataset (mined from WorldCat) included over 100 million people.[7]

  1. ^ "Search for library items". WorldCat. OCLC. Archived from the original on September 22, 2007. Retrieved March 29, 2017.
  2. ^ 1998 is the date of registry of the WorldCat.org domain; see: "WorldCat.org WHOIS, DNS, & Domain Info – DomainTools". WHOIS. Archived from the original on June 20, 2019. Retrieved January 21, 2017. However, the union catalog that became WorldCat was started three decades earlier, and it was already available on the web to subscriber libraries at OCLC.org several years before WorldCat.org was a registered domain name; see: "OCLC.org WHOIS, DNS, & Domain Info – DomainTools". WHOIS. Archived from the original on June 26, 2019. Retrieved June 26, 2019.
  3. ^ The 2012–2013 OCLC Annual Report noted that the number of "participating libraries (includes active and inactive symbols)" was 78,985: 2012–2013 OCLC Annual Report (Report). p. 5. OCLC 1226313226. Retrieved March 10, 2022.
  4. ^ a b "Inside WorldCat". OCLC. Archived from the original on January 30, 2017. Retrieved June 19, 2021.
  5. ^ Oswald, Godfrey (2017). "Largest unified international library catalog". Library world records (3rd ed.). Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company. p. 291. ISBN 9781476667775. OCLC 959650095.
  6. ^ "Content available through WorldCat Discovery" (XLS). OCLC. Archived from the original on September 22, 2020. Retrieved September 22, 2020.
  7. ^ "Data strategy [WorldCat]". oclc.org. Archived from the original on March 27, 2019. Retrieved February 11, 2018.

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