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About the WorldCat Registry

The WorldCat Registry is a Web-based directory for libraries and library consortia. It is an authoritative single source for information that defines institutional identity, services, relationships, contacts and other key data often shared with third parties. With it, you can:

  • Create and manage a profile that centralizes and automates information sharing with vendors and others—you don't maintain multiple identities, and their data is always up-to-date
  • Get greater visibility on the Web for your collection and services by syndicating your data over a variety of Web services including WorldCat.org

Streamline a common workflow: Identity maintenance

Illustration: A WorldCat Registry profile lets you maintain pertinent data about your institution or consortium in a single place. People with whom you formerly shared information using a variety of methods, such as Internet, fax, phone, and paper forms, can instead retrieve it themselves via a special Registry link you send them. Plus, some profile data such as your catalog's base URL is syndicated across the Web, so more people link to and use your content and services.

Institutions that purchase technology and content services from many different providers soon discover they're maintaining multiple organizational identities. Each time a piece of data changes—such as a phone number, contact name or Internet IP address—staff must take the time to notify each vendor separately, and often by various means: Web interfaces, paper forms, faxes and phone calls.

WorldCat Registry lets you take a more efficient approach to institutional identity. On a secure Web platform, you create and maintain a single profile that includes information such as:

  • Institution type
  • Identifying codes issued by industry organizations
  • Physical and electronic (IP) locations
  • Consortial memberships
  • Parent-child relationships (main and branch institutions)
  • Web-based services such as online catalog, "Ask-a" virtual reference and OpenURL servers
  • Vendors used
  • Budgetary and service statistics
  • Administrative contacts

You then share your Registry profile with technology vendors, electronic content or service providers, fellow consortial institutions, funding agencies—any organization that could benefit. You send them a special Web link that gives them instant, read-only access to your most current institutional data. See where your data goes »

This access can add even more efficiencies, allowing you to automate routine tasks such as activation of a new subscription service or renewal of an existing one. You'll greatly reduces the administrative burden associated with such services and the chance that they will "go dark" when internal system parameters such as IP addresses change.

Get greater Web visibility for your content and services

When you maintain a Registry profile, your institution's online services also get greater visibility in places they normally wouldn't. Through a variety of open-source Web services, your Registry data is syndicated across many popular Web sites and mobile applications where information seekers start to search, such as WorldCat.org. With links such as your online catalog's base URL or your OpenURL resolver distributed in this manner, more people from a broad-based Web audience discover and use your content.

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