Yocalcat OCLC WorldCat Local – outputs (One minute blog)

September 14, 2010 at 1:50 pm | Posted in Uncategorized, yocalcat | Leave a comment
Tags: jiscLMS, outputs, yocalcat

York St John University is implementing OCLC WorldCat Local as its resource discovery interface to the existing SirsiDynix Symphony OPAC. 

Why did we choose it? To enhance the student experience by making the library catalogue easier to search, so that items are more easily located, to give a more “Google-like” approach to searching, whilst at the same time providing a more advanced search experience if required.  Low NSS scores meant we had to do something to encourage easier access to library resources.  We looked at the other resource discovery options but couldn’t afford them; WorldCat Local is delivered on a subscription basis with an initial implementation fee and was therefore more affordable for us, as a small institution, and can currently be funded from the existing library budget.  As a tool for librarians WorldCat and OCLC generally have a good reputation, so we did not want to lose the value we have had from WorldCat over the years, which was also potentially under threat because of limits on database budgets.

How did the implementation go? As the first UK implementation of OCLC WorldCat Local we expected, and have had, a great deal of support from OCLC.  However, we hadn’t anticipated the level of technical knowledge required to extract and then re-input data into the existing system, for which we couldn’t use the “canned” approaches provided by the system, in order to allow the Z39.50 interface to work. Support came from the WorldCat Local community on that issue.  Integrity of data is another issue – some of our data couldn’t be loaded into WorldCat because MARC fields were missing so several passes had to be made to load the data.  We are still tidying up data!  Acquisitions and cataloguing workflows have changed as a result of becoming WorldCat members and cataloguing through the OCLC Connexions interface.  There were some issues with how the OCLC algorithm presents the data, particularly with display of recent editions and FRBR-isation and a solution is still being sought.

Do the students like it?  Yes, indications from usability tests carried out over the summer are that they do, although not all results have been analysed yet.  We’ll report more on that in the final case study.  Most have commented that it is easier to search.  Some of the librarians are not so sure, however, and feel it is more difficult to get at precise information.  Maybe they are taking the librarian’s view rather than seeing things from the users’ angle.  Most users don’t care how they get to the information, so long as they get it.