Something is always better than nothing

Full Disclosure: My library is an OCLC member and my state has a General Services Contract which enables most of my state’s libraries to get OCLC WorldCat at a reduced price.

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Jessamyn West’s most recent blog post on Open WorldCat prompted me to write a blog entry I’ve been thinking about for awhile. It’s about the danger of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. I know this is a cliche. But it’s true.

In her entry, WorldCat’s meme requests, Jessamyn writes:

Also, let me state for the record, that I think the WorldCat identities project is really smoking hot. However there is still a huge difference between “all libraries” and “OCLC member libraries” and I’ll continue to raise these polite objections to the willful blurring of the line between the two until the point at which WorldCat can direct me to the actual nearest copy of Jane Eyre to my house.

I’ve heard statements from other librarians that express a similar sentiment but aren’t as polite in their objections. Basically the idea I’ve heard expressed is that Open WorldCat results neither reflect all library holdings nor explicitly documents this fact to end users. Therefore, it is not in any library’s interest to promote Open WorldCat.

I freely stipulate that WorldCat’s failure to acknowledge non-member libraries is a problem. One that could be somewhat alleviated in the United States by showing one’s local library when your zip code failed to find a local copy. They could use National Center for Education Statistics data for this. I’m not sure that flagging the results as “from your nearest OCLC member libraries would help.” OCLC isn’t a household word outside the library field. They do no SuperBowl buys. But they could work harder at pointing people to local libraries. And it might encourage these local libraries to join OCLC. Or have a conversation with their patrons about the financial support needed to join OCLC.

So the fact that only OCLC member libraries have results that appear in Open WorldCat is a problem. But does that mean that we should reject free advertising for the library brand? What is better, that people should realize that some stuff they’re looking for is in a library somewhere? Or that they never run across library results of any kind? If Open WorldCat shows a person that Jane Eyre is only available at a library 500 miles away when it’s actually at your library, what happens? If they didn’t know about your library to begin with, then you haven’t lost any ground. If they do know about your
library, then they walk in or call and say “I can’t believe you don’t have Jane Eyre here!” Then you show them your own catalog, get them a copy of Jane Eyre and maybe show them the URL of your local catalog so that next time they can start closer to home. WorldCat didn’t show your library, but it did make a connection between you and your user.

I think that’s worth promoting the heck out of whenever and whereever I can. Granted we get more benefit because we are an OCLC member, but I believe we all win when libraries get mentioned at all!