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ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 41 | October 1999


NLA and the library community

NLA joins CORC

OCLC launched the CORC (Cooperative Online Resource (Catalog) research project in January 1999. Selected libraries from Canada, Europe, Asia and Australia were invited to join together with US libraries in an effort to develop a universally acceptable system for the cooperative cataloguing of web resources. The National Library’s involvement with the project commenced in April 1999.

CORC explores how libraries can use emerging automated cataloguing tools to develop such a cooperative catalogue of web resources. Participating libraries are given the opportunity to trial alternative cataloguing methods in an environment that encourages creativity and experimentation. MARC, Dublin Core and Research Description Framework (RDF) are all supported by the system for searching, cataloguing and record export. CORC also enables cataloguers to take advantage of metadata already existing within web resources. Gathering software extracts data from the resource and uses this to populate specified fields within the catalogue record. Considerable editing can still be required, as the results are only as good as the existing metadata.

CORC exploits the data within the cooperative catalogue by supporting the generation of portal pages or ‘pathfinders’. These are essentially bibliographies of web resources, although non web resources can also be included. Search queries can be embedded within a pathfinder so that the pathfinder is automatically updated as relevant catalogue records are added to the CORC database.

The National Library is using its participation in the CORC project as an opportunity to explore alternative approaches to describing web resources and developing subject bibliographies. After experimenting with several methods, the Library decided to export its records from KineticaWeb rather than create them directly in CORC. The Library catalogues only those web resources selected for the PANDORA project, and the scope of PANDORA means that only distinctly Australian resources are selected and catalogued. Therefore, the Library does not benefit greatly from the content of the CORC database. Kinetica is a more reliable source of authority data and catalogue records for Australian web resources. The CORC project team is very responsive to suggestions and comments made by participants. One of the privileges of participating in CORC is the knowledge that your organisation is having a direct impact on the project's final product.

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Please address any comments and enquiries to The Editor, Gateways: lkirwan@nla.gov.au

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