OCLC operates many services and programs for libraries, but the major
ones are an online cataloging system, an interlibrary loan system, and
a reference service. The reference service (FirstSearch) includes full-text
databases as well as databases of abstracts and indexes. We currently serve
more than 25,000 libraries, have more than 1,100 full-text with-graphics
journals online, and the FirstSearch databases contain more than 250 million
records.
We started working on full-textjournals by examining new approaches
to information display. We felt that there would be a gradual movement
from the availability of only metadata electronically to the full text of reference
works, journal articles, and finally books. We started investigating
and working with Donald Kuth's Metafont and TeX as soon as they were
available, even to the point of doing our own ports of the systems. In
general, this is the progression we have seen, although the wide availability
of journal articles has taken longer than we expected twenty years ago.
Publisher
Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Series/Report Name or Number
Successes & Failures of Digital Libraries: [papers presented at the 1998 Clinic on Library Applications of Data Processing, March 22-24, 1998]
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