About 40 minutes ago, a library somewhere in the 96 countries and territories in which OCLC has members added the billionth holding to WorldCat! A billion things that OCLC and its members know the whereabouts of, in public libraries, academic libraries, theological libraries, law libraries, medical libraries, historical society libraries and all the other kinds of libraries that are represented in the OCLC family of over 53,500 libraries. A billion holdings added to over 60 million records over a span of about 34 years by at least three generations of librarians working collectively to build WorldCat from the small, local database it began as to the stellar international resource it is today.
Congratulations to every single librarian and library staff member who has ever entered a record, added a holding symbol, and corrected or upgraded a record.
And thank you.
And that's all I know right now! My internal sources indicate there will be plenty of information forthcoming.
Update: in a fitting closing of the circle, it was a local Ohio library that entered the billionth holding, the Worthington Libraries, at 2.21.34.28pm EDT. The previous and following records were entered at 2.21.34.16 and 2.21.34.29. Seriously. That's how close the race was.
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2 comments:
Congratulations!
Well, don't keep us in suspense! Who? Where? What?
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