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WorldCat (the OCLC Online Union Catalog)

WorldCat is a worldwide union catalog created and maintained collectively by more than 9,000 member institutions. With millions of online records built from the bibliographic and ownership information of contributing libraries, it is the largest and most comprehensive database of its kind.

There are many views and communities of users of the WorldCat database:

• Collections & technical services staff access WorldCat for high quality cataloging records. For more information see: http://www.oclc.org/connexion/default.htm.
• Reference staff and all kinds of researchers, from high school and college students, to faculty, to genealogists use the WorldCat database on FirstSearch to perform basic and complex searches of the contents of the world's libraries. For more information see: http://www.oclc.org/support/documentation/firstsearch/databases/dbdetails/details/WorldCat.htm.
• Resource sharing staff in libraries depend upon a specialized staff view of the WorldCat database on FirstSearch to borrow and lend library materials. For more information, see: http://www.oclc.org/resourcesharing/default.htm.
• Users of the open Web have access to WorldCat.org, a freely available discovery tool from OCLC, linking library users to resources around the world. For more information, see: http://www.oclc.org/worldcat/dotorg/default.htm.

WorldCat-listed resources span thousands of years and nearly every form of human expression. Records exist for everything from stone tablets to electronic books, wax recordings to MP3s, DVDs and web sites.

Many WorldCat records are enriched with cover art, tables of contents, reviews, excerpts and other descriptive information. Records typically have library holdings information attached.

Features

• Over 84 million records and growing.
• High hit rate for materials of all formats
• Resources in hundreds of languages from more than 80 countries
• High quality cataloging