OBS OCLC COMMITTEE
	Susan Chinoransky George Washington University Law Library schinoransky@burns.nlc.gwu.edu

I recently had the opportunity to hear OCLC president Jay Jordan speak at the annual meeting of CAPCON, the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area OCLC affiliate. I was struck by how easily Jordan was able to assimilate his knowledge of information technology into the much more specialized realm of libraries. Then it occurred to me that it wasn't so much a change in thinking for him as it has been a drastic (and sometimes overwhelming) metamorphosis in librarianship from the print to the electronic world.

Jordan spoke reassuring words about OCLC's role in the continuing support of libraries; that is, OCLC's mission has been and continues to be threefold:

  » to further access to the world's information;
  » to reduce information costs;
  » to promote the evolution of libraries, library use, and librarianship.

He went on to elaborate on how OCLC intends to accomplish this mission by:

  » building web accessible services;
  » helping to solve the issue of the archival of electronic resources;
  » expanding its global presence;
  » integrating OCLC services;
  » leading the library world in research and development.

He finished by stating OCLC's vision:

  » to be the leading global library membership cooperative;
  » to be the primary source of bibliographic information, reference services and resource sharing worldwide;
  » to be a leading educational institute for librarianship globally.

CORC (Cooperative Online Resource Catalog)

CORC is OCLC's biggest project currently in development. The goal is to explore the cooperative creation and sharing of metadata by libraries. CORC has been designed to help both libraries and OCLC to move more quickly in coping with the huge amount of material becoming available on the World Wide Web. CORC is similar to InterCat, one of OCLC's recent projects involving the cataloging of Web resources. However, CORC will be integrating the newer metadata initiatives with MARC and will also utilize the Dublin Core. Participating libraries have begun to contribute records (the database can be accessed at http://corc.oclc.org/). As of January 1999, participants were still being solicited. Participant institutions are asked to commit at least ½ FTE to the CORC project over the next 12 to 18 months. CORC is expected to grow to 100+ institutions. More information about the project can be found on the CORC webpage http://purl.oclc.org/corc.

OCLC Institute Course Offered at AALL in Washington, D.C.

CAPCON will sponsor a regional seminar presented by OCLC entitled: Knowledge Access Management: Tools and Concepts for Next-Generation Catalogers. The seminar will be held July 14-16 at the Georgetown University Conference Center. It consists of an intensive 2 ½ days, onsite instruction, discussion, and handon training combined with 1 ½ days' distance learning accomplished in the following month. The seminar is designed for cataloging team leaders, digital cataloging principals, or electronic resource librarians and will provide a comprehensive and practical understanding of cataloging Internet resources. For more information, please see the OCLC Institute's webpage at http://www.oclc.org/institute/index.htm.