OLUC -- 25 Years of Library Partnership and Cooperation

As we celebrate the Smithsonian Institution on the anniversary of its creation 150 years ago, we need to note as well that 1996 marks the 25th anniversary of the development of the most consulted database in all of academia, the OCLC Online Union Catalog (OLUC). No other database has served to further scholarly communication and the efficient and effective operation of libraries and organizations across the world committed to research as has OLUC. The database was most recently augmented by the addition of 278,000 records from the Waseda University, Japan, an example of the breath of the database, the world's largest information network. Some 20,000 libraries in the U.S. and 61 other countries and territories use and contribute to OLUC and the many other services supplied by OCLC, a nonprofit computer service organization. OLUC contains over 34 million records and grows by some 2 million annually. At the fourteenth annual OCLC Research Library Directors' Conference at OCLC headquarters in Dublin, Ohio, recently, the incredible success of OCLC was noted in its programs and far-reaching plans for addressing the expanding capability technology offers libraries and the research community. In addition to its early emphasis and continuing strength, cost effective cataloging and interlibrary loan systems, the success of its reference services is rapidly making OCLC a household word in the world of scholarship. FirstSearch contains over 1 million full-text articles for immediate online viewing; indeed, FirstSearch inquiries number over 36 million since fall 1991. Later this year OCLC and EBSCO Publishing will introduce a database of full-text article images which will be available to FirstSearch users on the World Wide Web (WWW) along with some 60 other databases using a WWW browser. Its NetFirst indexes Internet-accessible resources including WWW home pages, interest groups, library catalogs, and electronic journals. OCLC's Electronic Journals Online (EJO) includes a number of journals in medicine and biology, all eleven of IEEE Proceedings Online and will soon include all Elsevier Science journal titles. Those of you who read The Chronicle of Higher Education may have noticed OCLC's full page ads calling attention to "The New Electronic Scholarship," what OCLC calls a defining moment for study, instruction, and research. The research library directors who gathered for the recent meeting could not agree more. OCLC has in the past 25 years established an array of services in cataloging, interlibrary loan, document delivery, reference, and electronic publishing unparalleled in the research community providing an increasingly integrated approach to meeting the information needs of an ever increasing user community while adhering to a cost-effective means of serving these needs. OCLC's role in creating the national digital library and in supporting the often overlooked but critical need to archive these records is being addressed. The library directors found these early plans to be what has begun to be expected of OCLC, timely planning with need, cost and utility as important considerations. The Smithsonian Institution Libraries takes advantage of many of OCLC's programs. You might visit one of our branch libraries to see what OCLC and other service providers are offering to assist you in doing your work and answering your information needs so that you can take advantage of this "defining moment."

Barbara J. Smith
Director

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