OCLC and Gale have signed an agreement to index Gale's flagship full-text periodical databases in WorldCat Local to provide single-search access to users that subscribe to both services.
The agreement calls for OCLC to centrally index the metadata of Gale's Academic OneFile and General OneFile databases to provide WorldCat Local users a direct link to the abstracts and articles in these popular, authoritative resources. The two databases contain some 100 million records each that connect to millions of full-text articles in both HTML and PDF from peer-reviewed journals, newspapers and magazines, as well as thousands of podcasts and transcripts.
The result is that Gale's high-quality content, which is among the most popular in libraries, will be more visible to library patrons through WorldCat Local, and searchers no longer will need to log in to multiple interfaces or navigate numerous results sets to find and get to the information they need.
"We are pleased to be working with OCLC to provide expanded access to some of our popular, award-winning databases through WorldCat Local and to extend our reach to users around the world," said John Barnes, Gale Executive Vice President, Strategic Marketing and Business Development. "One of our objectives at Gale is to reach users wherever they do their research and connect them to high-quality content and resources their library holds. This partnership will expand our efforts to accomplish that goal."
"This partnership continues our effort to make the full range of library resources accessible through WorldCat Local," said Chip Nilges, OCLC Vice President, Business Development. "It is part of our goal to provide libraries with an integrated discovery and delivery service for their physical, licensed and locally produced electronic collections. We're very pleased to add Gale to the leading content providers who are partnering with OCLC to make their content more accessible to libraries and their patrons through WorldCat Local."
Gale joins a growing list of OCLC eContent partners that have agreed to have their databases indexed in WorldCat Local. These institutions are collaborating on a global scale to ensure that library users can find and access the valuable, authoritative content in their local libraries, in regional libraries and through the OCLC network of WorldCat libraries worldwide. Today, more than 100 databases, 420 million article records, and numerous digital library collections, including Google Book Search and HathiTrust, are combined with the 170 million items cataloged in WorldCat to provide libraries using WorldCat Local a rich and growing index that represents the combined print, electronic and digital collections of the OCLC membership.
WorldCat Local is the service that combines the cooperative power of OCLC member libraries worldwide with the ability to use WorldCat.org as a solution for local discovery and delivery services. WorldCat Local provides a powerful discovery environment that includes a locally branded Web page and single search box, and presents localized results first while at the same time allowing the user to search the entire WorldCat database.
Since August 2009, users of WorldCat Local have been able to search content found in OCLC electronic resource services--OCLC FirstSearch databases, NetLibrary eBooks and eAudiobooks, Electronic Collections Online eJournals, ArchiveGrid archival collection descriptions and CAMIO (Catalog of Art Museum Images Online)--from the WorldCat Local search box. The Gale partnership continues these efforts by adding content from non-OCLC sources, giving libraries a full-featured way to easily connect information seekers with the materials they need.
OCLC is expanding the central index to include resources from other familiar content providers that are most used by libraries today. Over time, the central index will provide access to the majority of available content, and will be complemented by searching remote indexes to incorporate the diverse materials libraries make available to their users.
