Education Commons^™

Building Kentucky Collections With Worldcat, Carol Watwood

DLPS Faculty Publications

As the world’s largest bibliographic database, OCLC’s WorldCat is well known for its uses in cataloging and interlibrary loans. Less well known is its usefulness and versatility in making day-to-day decisions about collection development. The FirstSearch interface, available throughout Kentucky, is a user-friendly and useful interface for identifying relevant materials for a library’s collection. The prepublication records are helpful as an “early warning” for new publications. Other uses include the identification of state- and subject-specific materials. Also, the links and holdings records can help evaluate appropriateness for particular types of libraries and identify materials of interest. Furthermore, the inclusion of …