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> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On > Behalf Of Keith Jenkins > Sent: 05 September, 2006 12:42 > To: [log in to unmask] > Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] LC MARC records? > > Worldcat.org, as nice as it is, only offers a limited subset > of bibliographic data. There's no way to get to the > underlying MARC record, as far as I can see. Or am I missing > something? People seem to be confused over the difference between Open WorldCat and WorldCat.org. It is understandable since both have WorldCat in them. Open WorldCat is a 4 million record set that search engines, such as Google and Yahoo, get from OCLC. The reason for this reduced set is that the search engine folks couldn't ingest all of WorldCat. We really wanted them to ingest the whole thing, but they balked. In Google's case, due to how they view resources, many bibliographic records looked like duplicates and so they told OCLC that they didn't want the whole thing. So we basically gave them a FRBR-ized view of the most commonly held records. Due to a number of factors, one being this limitation of the search engines to expose all of WorldCat, OCLC created the WorldCat.org search portal which does exposes all 80 million plus, bibliographic records. So when you go to: <http://worldcat.org/> you get access to all the records. If you come in from an Internet search engine, you will only see the 4 million records they ingested. Actually, most people didn't realize that even though the search engines only incorporated 4 million records into their result lists, people had access to the full 80 million records through URL manipulation. It is true, today, that you do not have access to the underlying MARC record, however the document returned from WorldCat.org is a well formed XHTML document that can be run through an XSLT to be used in a mash-up. The Open WorldCat team, who is now responsible for both Open WorldCat and WorldCat.org is working on an SRU/W interface to WorldCat.org. Not sure what record formats will be delivered, e.g., MARC, Dublin Core, etc. since this is on their TODO list and that's about all I know. Andy.