Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Global Collective Resources: A Study Of Monographic Bibliographic Records In Worldcat., Anna H. Perrault

School of Information Faculty Publications

In 2001, WorldCat, the primary international bibliographic utility, contained 45 million records with over 750 million library location listings. These records span over 4,000 years of recorded knowledge in 377 languages.1 Under the auspices of an OCLC/ALISE research grant, a bibliometric study was conducted of WorldCat. A 10% systematic random sample of the database was analyzed utilizing the OCLC iCAS product to profile the monographic bibliographic records in WorldCat by type of library, subject, language, and publication date parameters. The profile details the Ainformation commons@ of global publication made accessible through the OCLC international network. There were 3,378,272 usable records …