1 Anna H. Perrault Professor School of Library and Information Science University of South Florida WorldCat = Worldwide Presented at the 2nd International Conference on the Future of the Book Beijing, China

2 OCLC WorldCat OCLC, Inc., a non-profit bibliographic utility based in Dublin, Ohio in the USA, was founded in 1967 as the Ohio College Library Center. The original purpose of the Ohio College Library Center was to form a Union Catalog (a database of bibliographic records contributed by the library membership of a consortia). The OCLC Union catalog, founded in 1971, was later renamed WorldCat, an international database which contains approximately 50 million bibliographic records.

3 OCLC WorldCat WorldCat is now the largest and most comprehensive database of bibliographic information in the world with records for materials spanning four millennia of recorded knowledge, from 2,000 BC to the present. By the year 2004, there were 50,000 libraries in 80 countries participating in the OCLC Library Cooperative. As of late 2003, there were 50,670,419 total records in WorldCat, with 900 million location listings for those materials. Of these bibliographic records, 42,280,435 or 83.7% were for books with the remaining 16.3% for other formats such as periodicals, maps, scores, sound recordings, computer files, and mixed format materials. The language distribution at that time was 31,265,760 records for English language materials with the remainder divided among over 400 languages.

4 WorldCat Study In 2002, a study of the book records in WorldCat was conducted utilizing a 10% systematic random sample The sample records were analyzed by publication date 24 primary subject categories five type of library groupings seven languages groupings: English, German, French, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, and Russian.

5 Increase in Book Production For 3 centuries, , the rate of publication was slightly more than double over the previous century. In the first half of the 19th century there was a 45% increase over the entire 18th century. In the latter half of the 19th century production tripled over the first half. Another tripling occurred in the first half of the 20th century.

6 Figure 1 Book Publication by Year Figure 2 Rate of Book Publication for the 20th Century

7 In the last half of the 20th century, the rate of publication quadrupled over the first half. Figure 2 shows the 20th century in decades. Only and the 1940s have a decrease in book production. The 1950's increase 49% over the 1940s. The 1960's increase 82% over the 1950s. The 1970's are 61% over the 1960s. 1980's increase is only 27% While the number of records in the sample increased from 179,592 in the 1950s to 527,607 in the 1970s. One percent decrease in the 1990s.

8 Table 1 Number of Records Percentage of Total Non- English Records Percentage of Total WorldCat Subject Records French146, %6.7% German140, %6.4% Spanish109, %5.0% Chinese52,6056.6%2.4% Russian50,3736.3%2.3% Japanese37,3025.0%2.0% Totals536, %24.8%

9 Ratio of English to non-English The ratio of English to non-English language records in the study sample is 65/35, or 2 to 1 for most of the 20th century. Of the 35% in non-English, 67.5% of the records are in the six non-English languages in the study Thus, 32.5%, less than one-third, of all non-English records are in languages other than the six major language groups analyzed in the study 24.8% of all book records in WorldCat are accounted for by the six largest non-English language groupings. The non-English languages are overwhelmingly contributed by research libraries, including the Library of Congress, the British Library, Bibliotheque Nationale, National Library of China, Chile,

10 Table 2 LANGUAG EPre Chinese French01911,3475,0456,23013,5795,3723,966 German ,1663,88212,8447,0286,227 Japanese Russian ,4781, Spanish ,3214,3902,4052,263 Total69232,1678,29511,86433,05616,75914, Chinese1,0872,6981,8132,7364,0586,1296,8131,637 French5,8195,5214,6656,53111,56818,46710,6942,343 German7,5767,6295,2097,57214,82620,58110,8482,156 Japanese8071,7022,1011,5353,3955,9425,4961,014 Russian1,2691,2801,1763,5057,3459,5765,8301,246 Spanish2,8773,7675,7376,54911,95818,52510,6502,212 Total19,43522,59720,70128,42853,15079,22050,33110,608

Chinese1,3971,7661,5681,6741,6401,6971,7921,996 French2,5442,5942,7723,0123,2453,1203,3983,422 German2,0361,9422,1372,1142,3122,3922,3172,424 Japanese ,0941,1991,1361,1351,173 Russian1,2761,1411,1851,2501,2771,2061,0361,114 Spanish2,2462,3532,3622,4042,6132,6492,8312,815 Total10,32910,73811,00511,54812,28612,20012,50912, Chinese1,9321,9361,6532,2241, French3,5233,4023,1703,3753,1452, German2,5072,2332,0962,0221,4501, Japanese1, , Russian1,0981,1071,1131, Spanish2,9682,7202,5102,5952,2791, Total13,16712,39311,55112,1159,8627,1861,4072 OtherTOTAL Chinese47852,605 French912146,815 German1,088140,006 Japanese10137,302 Russian7550,373 Spanish512109,260 Total3,166536,361

12 Recent Developments The Open Access Initiative OCLC and Google Full Text OCLC Environmental Scan

13 Five subject divisions account for nearly 60% of the records in the sample. Language, literature, and linguistics –21% History –13.3% business/economics –9.6% philosophy, religion –8.2% engineering/technology–6.8%

14 Summary and Conclusions Upon analysis, the WorldCat database reflects the collections of the member libraries worldwide, but not necessarily the profile of the universe of publication The profile of WorldCat is most probably skewed by the predominance of the large libraries that use the Library of Congress or Dewey Decimal classification schemes. But the profile does show the publication patterns and library collecting patterns for North American and European libraries. The non-English language records will undoubtedly continue to increase in percentage share as more libraries internationally join the OCLC Worldwide cooperative. And the 50 million plus bibliographic records represent a universe of rich resources for research that are available worldwide through the OCLC network.