Concept
WorldCat
Overview
WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions (mostly libraries), in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the OCLC member libraries collectively maintain WorldCat's database, the world's largest bibliographic database. The database includes other information sources in addition to member library collections. OCLC makes WorldCat itself available free to libraries, but the catalog is the foundation for other subscription OCLC services (such as resource sharing and collection management). WorldCat is used by librarians for cataloging and research and by the general public.
As of December 2021, WorldCat contained over 540 million bibliographic records in 483 languages, representing over 3 billion physical and digital library assets, and the WorldCat persons dataset (mined from WorldCat) included over 100 million people.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
The "hit list" that is supplied takes the relevance ranking into account, making the first hit, in effect, the one the software has selected as the most relevant example. While in the text of one of the broadside documents, FLEISCHHAUER remarked AM's attempt to find ways to connect cataloging to the texts, which it does in different ways in different manifestations. In the case shown, the cataloging was pasted on…
Library of Congress, Workshop on Electronic Texts
States what WorldCat is.
The public library of the King of France is the finest in the whole world, less on account of the number and rarity of the volumes than of the ease and courtesy with which the librarians lend them to all scholars. This library is incontestably the most precious monument there is in France. This astounding multitude of books should not scare.
Voltaire, Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary
States what WorldCat is.
The circulation of the _Bulletin_ is about 2,000. The _Periodical_ is a ‘house magazine’, perhaps the first of its kind. It was first published in December 1896, and now appears five times a year. Its contents include extracts, of sufficient length to be readable, from new Oxford books, specimen illustrations, quotations from reviews and other newspaper comment on the productions of the Press, obituaries and other…
Oxford University Press, Some Account of the Oxford University Press, 1468-1921
Close in meaning to WorldCat; the term itself is not named.