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It has become a cliché to speak of the World Wide Web and the explosion of information contained therein. Librarians continue to struggle with ways to make sense out of the web and give their patrons some direction as they begin their research. Most law library web sites offer a list of frequently consulted links, or provide bookmarks on the public terminals. But these lists can be troublesome and cumbersome to maintain. And when lists of web sites aren't tied to the catalog, patrons have to consult 2 sources—the catalog and the library's web site. What librarians need is an easy way to add records for popular and useful web sites to their local catalogs. And it sounds as if that easy way lies with CORC, OCLC's Cooperative Online Resource Catalog. This program was presented to give attendees an overview of the CORC program as well as insights into how CORC has been used in 3 different academic law libraries.

Kay Covert, a marketing analyst at OCLC was the first speaker and she began by reminding us that library users today have an "I want it now" expectation. She showed us how popular web search engines like Google can often produce an overabundance of information with few tools to distinguish good from bad. Ms. Covert told us that we could make the web more like a library by "selecting" important and useful web sites to catalog as part of our collections. She then went on to describe metadata and the Dublin Core standard for the description of web resources. From here she turned to the CORC program, which she described as a "tool to turn web resources into library resources". CORC uses automated techniques to "harvest" information from a web site and enter that information into the correct Dublin Core or MARC fields (the user has a choice whether to view Dublin Core or MARC records as the system toggles between the two). CORC also has linked authority control for more efficient name verification. And a user can choose to have OCLC do URL maintenance on the record and notify a library when a link is no longer working properly. Once created, CORC records are also added to WorldCat (OCLC's bibliographic database) and are available to any OCLC user. An additional interesting feature of CORC is the ability to create pathfinders or "webliographies". Ms. Covert showed us how the pathfinders can be created from scratch or a CORC member can use one of the pre-existing pathfinders. These pathfinders are added to a library's web page to aid patrons in their research. Ms. Covert concluded by saying that any OCLC member can log on and begin using CORC immediately. Charges for CORC mirror charges for WorldCat. And non-members can visit the CORC home page for information on joining the program http://www.oclc.org/corc/.

The next speaker was Ruth Patterson Funabiki of the University of Idaho Law Library. She gave us the perspective of a small to medium-sized law library that serves a diverse population with a small staff. They are charter members of the CORC program. She told us that many Idaho documents are only available online, so CORC has been important for providing access to these documents for their patrons. Ms. Funabiki works with her public services librarians to identify sites to catalog. After cataloging a site, she downloads the MARC version. She told us that her current catalog does not support linking from a record to a web site, but they are in the process of migrating to a new system that does support linking. She also told us that her favorite features of CORC are linked authorities, harvesting capabilities, and URL monitoring. From her perspective it's clear that participating in CORC has been a valuable experience and she encouraged the audience members to join.

The Moritz Law Library at Ohio State University is another CORC participant. Mary Rider of OSU gave a detailed presentation on her library's experience with CORC. They joined CORC in January 2000 while it was still in its pilot project phase. In describing why they joined CORC, Ms. Rider said that she sees CORC as the prototype for future OCLC developments in web-based cataloging and she wanted to be a part of that effort sooner rather than later. Also she saw CORC as the impetus her library needed to deal with e-resources in a more systematic way—it stimulated their thinking about the process of selection, cataloging, and maintenance of them. In addition, they also considered whether that resource should simultaneously be added to their web page. Ms. Rider gave us a detailed description of their workflow. Web sites are chosen for cataloging by OSU's reference librarians. A form is filled out and submitted to the Head of Reference for approval. When the request is approved, it is forwarded to Ms. Rider for cataloging. She searches the CORC database; if she finds a matching record it is downloaded, but if no matching record is found she creates one for downloading. Indeed the steps are very familiar to those of us with a cataloging background. As OSU looks to the future, they hope to involve reference librarians more in the process of searching and creating records in CORC. They also want to consider contributing NACO records via CORC. She told us that they add 5-10 records per month to their catalog and that many more web sites are being added to their catalog than to their web page. Ms. Rider concluded by listing numerous benefits of participating in CORC. Some of those benefits include: cooperation between public services and technical services staff, ability to "harvest" a record, URL maintenance, and the ability of patrons to use familiar search strategies to find web resources. Like the speakers before her, she concluded by urging us to join CORC.

Our final speaker gave us the public services perspective of being a CORC participant. Brendan Starkey is a Reference Librarian at Seattle University Law Library and he began by telling us why we need CORC. With CORC we can do a better job of incorporating online resources into our library. He told us that if a library does a good job of cataloging web resources, it will make the OPAC (and by extension the library) the best portal for users. Of course, resources disappear or change and URLs also change. CORC's URL checker is a partial solution to this dilemma. He also discussed some of the new naming technologies that we will soon see (such as Digital Object Identifier or RealNames) that will also provide stability to these records when they appear in our catalogs. Like Ms. Covert, he argued that commercial search engines can be inefficient and time-consuming, but librarians can offer credible and authoritative information through CORC. He then went on to describe the workflow at Seattle. There, each librarian is responsible for selecting resources (both print and online) for given subject areas. They identify a web resource, catalog it in CORC (or use a pre-existing record), and load it into their local catalog. In addition he told us how selectors create subject-specific research guides (the pathfinders) for their web site.

In conclusion, it is clear that all 4 speakers are enthusiastic about the CORC program and its potential to help librarians make the most of web resources. Like any cooperative program the greater the number of participants, the greater the benefits. Perhaps now is the time for more of us to join the program. If you'd like to learn more, consult some of these web sites that were suggested by our speakers:

CORC home page: http://www.oclc.org/corc
CORC users group home page: http://www.sil.si.edu/staff/CORC-user-group/content.htm
Brendan Starkey's presentation: http://www.law.seattleu.edu/information/starkey/CORC_files/frame.htm

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