CORC: a system for gateway creation
| Pages | 49-56 |
| Date | 01 February 2000 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/14684520010371549 |
| Published date | 01 February 2000 |
| Author | Thomas B. Hickey |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
CORC: a system for
gateway creation
Thomas B. Hickey
The goal of the CORC project is to create a
system that libraries can use to provide their
patrons with effective access to the Web. In
this way it is similar to what are often called
subject gateways which provide a structured
approach to Internet resources, often within a
limited range of subjects. CORC's approach
to the whole process, however, is different
than most gateway projects in several ways:
.large scale cooperative involving
thousands of libraries;
.many collections in a single database;
.emphasis on the system and tools;
.international in scope;
.integration with existing library
procedures;
.adaptation of traditional library
techniques;
.support of hand-crafted pathfinder pages;
.support of multiple metadata schemes;
.planned to be self-supporting.
In short, CORC is the result of translating
many of the concepts developed by subject
gateways into the environment of a large
library cooperative. At OCLC we are
concentrating on building the most useful
system for libraries, which implies a
challenging combination of existing and
future needs. We do not spend much time on
selection criteria ± individual or groups of
libraries develop those sorts of policies. Our
mission is to support what they want to do
now and to anticipate their future needs.
Large scale cooperative
OCLC currently serves some 35,000 libraries,
7,000 of which are actively contributing
metadata to OCLC's traditional service
embodied by WorldCat (the OCLC Online
Union Catalog), a database of more than
42,000,000 distinct items, 34,000,000 of
which are books or monographs of some type.
This catalog is based on AACR2[1] and
MARC 21[2] with fairly strict rules on what is
allowed in it, who can create or edit records
and how the records and the entries in the
records should be constructed. Currently
WorldCat contains references to
approximately 100,000 Internet resources,
and this number is rapidly growing. The main
database is augmented by a database of
controlled names and subjects maintained in
conjunction with the Library of Congress.
The author
Thomas B. Hickey is Chief Scientist at OCLC Online
Computer Library Center, Dublin, Ohio, USA. E-mail:
hickey@oclc.org
Keywords
Cataloguing, Systems development, Libraries, Internet,
Databases, Information retrieval
Abstract
CORC is an OCLC project that is developing tools and
systems to enable libraries to provide enhanced access to
Internet resources. By adapting and extending library
techniques and procedures, we are developing a self-
supporting system capable of describing a large and
useful subset of the Web. CORC is more a system for
hosting and supporting subject gateways than a gateway
itself and relies on large-scale cooperation among
libraries to maintain a centralized database. By supporting
emerging metadata standards such as Dublin Core and
other standards such as Unicode and RDF, CORC
broadens the range of libraries and librarians able to
participate. Current plans are for OCLC as a full service in
July 2000.
Electronic access
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is
available at
http://www.emerald-library.com
Service profiles
49
Online Information Review
Volume 24 .Number 1 .2000 .pp. 49±53
#MCB University Press .ISSN 1468-4527
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