Bibliographic Services — McMaster University Libraries

Over the next year or two, we hope to do some intensive collection management work. In support of that, we have subscribed to OCLC’s WorldCat Collection Analysis (WCA) tool.

WCA will allow us to compare our holdings at McMaster to other libraries. This could be a one to one comparison, putting our engineering holdings against those at the University of Waterloo, for example, or seeing how we stack up against an academic library that is slightly larger than we are. The more common use, though, is against a group of libraries. We might look at our collection against the other OCUL members, or against a group of ARL or CARL libraries. The goal is to help us identify areas where our collection is strong and where it needs further development.

WCA is a fairly flexible tool, allowing us to do analyses at a broad level over a range of LC class numbers or drill down to individual titles in a given subject area. This title-level data may prove useful in purchasing books for subjects our liaison librarians identify as needing growth. Many WCA libraries are also using this title-level analysis to target digitization and preservation projects. WCA can help us pick out unique holdings that we need to preserve, perhaps by shifting them from stacks to Research Collections as some other libraries are doing, and to identify titles in the public-domain that could be digitized for greater access.

The full benefits of WCA really depend on having all of the library’s holdings in OCLC. Since we get a free batchload to start the process off, we’ve begun with that. Karen has started extracting files of MARC records from Horizon representing all of UL’s print and purchased e-resource holdings. These files are sent to OCLC for matching against WorldCat. If a matching record is found, our holdings are updated; new records are added to OCLC for our original cataloguing; and holdings deleted from OCLC for titles we have withdrawn.

We only get one freebie, so going forward it’s important for us to make sure we’re maintaining our holdings. This would include adding our holdings for titles that we purchase or receive as donations, adding holdings to existing records for items in Research Collections, and using our “so” status code for any new records we create. We also have to delete our OCLC holdings if we withdraw the last copy of a title. If we don’t keep the holdings up to date, our analyses won’t be accurate.

We’ll be sharing more information about this once our analysis gets underway!