OCLC
OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Incorporated d/b/a OCLC is an American nonprofit cooperative organization "dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the world's information and reducing information costs". It was founded in 1967 as the Ohio College Library Center. OCLC and its member libraries cooperatively produce and maintain WorldCat, the largest online public access catalog in the world. OCLC is funded by the fees that libraries have to pay for its services. OCLC maintains the Dewey Decimal Classification system. OCLC began in 1967, as the Ohio College Library Center, through a collaboration of university presidents, vice presidents, library directors who wanted to create a cooperative computerized network for libraries in the state of Ohio; the group first met on July 5, 1967 on the campus of the Ohio State University to sign the articles of incorporation for the nonprofit organization, hired Frederick G. Kilgour, a former Yale University medical school librarian, to design the shared cataloging system.
Kilgour wished to merge the latest information storage and retrieval system of the time, the computer, with the oldest, the library. The plan was to merge the catalogs of Ohio libraries electronically through a computer network and database to streamline operations, control costs, increase efficiency in library management, bringing libraries together to cooperatively keep track of the world's information in order to best serve researchers and scholars; the first library to do online cataloging through OCLC was the Alden Library at Ohio University on August 26, 1971. This was the first online cataloging by any library worldwide. Membership in OCLC is based on use of services and contribution of data. Between 1967 and 1977, OCLC membership was limited to institutions in Ohio, but in 1978, a new governance structure was established that allowed institutions from other states to join. In 2002, the governance structure was again modified to accommodate participation from outside the United States.
As OCLC expanded services in the United States outside Ohio, it relied on establishing strategic partnerships with "networks", organizations that provided training and marketing services. By 2008, there were 15 independent United States regional service providers. OCLC networks played a key role in OCLC governance, with networks electing delegates to serve on the OCLC Members Council. During 2008, OCLC commissioned two studies to look at distribution channels. In early 2009, OCLC negotiated new contracts with the former networks and opened a centralized support center. OCLC provides bibliographic and full-text information to anyone. OCLC and its member libraries cooperatively produce and maintain WorldCat—the OCLC Online Union Catalog, the largest online public access catalog in the world. WorldCat has holding records from private libraries worldwide; the Open WorldCat program, launched in late 2003, exposed a subset of WorldCat records to Web users via popular Internet search and bookselling sites.
In October 2005, the OCLC technical staff began a wiki project, WikiD, allowing readers to add commentary and structured-field information associated with any WorldCat record. WikiD was phased out; the Online Computer Library Center acquired the trademark and copyrights associated with the Dewey Decimal Classification System when it bought Forest Press in 1988. A browser for books with their Dewey Decimal Classifications was available until July 2013; until August 2009, when it was sold to Backstage Library Works, OCLC owned a preservation microfilm and digitization operation called the OCLC Preservation Service Center, with its principal office in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The reference management service QuestionPoint provides libraries with tools to communicate with users; this around-the-clock reference service is provided by a cooperative of participating global libraries. Starting in 1971, OCLC produced catalog cards for members alongside its shared online catalog. OCLC commercially sells software, such as CONTENTdm for managing digital collections.
It offers the bibliographic discovery system WorldCat Discovery, which allows for library patrons to use a single search interface to access an institution's catalog, database subscriptions and more. OCLC has been conducting research for the library community for more than 30 years. In accordance with its mission, OCLC makes its research outcomes known through various publications; these publications, including journal articles, reports and presentations, are available through the organization's website. OCLC Publications – Research articles from various journals including Code4Lib Journal, OCLC Research, Reference & User Services Quarterly, College & Research Libraries News, Art Libraries Journal, National Education Association Newsletter; the most recent publications are displayed first, all archived resources, starting in 1970, are available. Membership Reports – A number of significant reports on topics ranging from virtual reference in libraries to perceptions about library funding. Newsletters – Current and archived newsletters for the library and archive community.
Presentations – Presentations from both guest speakers and OCLC research from conferences and other events. The presentations are organized into five categories: Conference presentations, Dewey presentations, Distinguished Seminar Series, Guest presentations, Research staff
Edmund Roberts (diplomat)
Edmund Roberts, appointed by President Andrew Jackson as the United States' first envoy to the Far East, went on the USS Peacock on two consecutive non-resident diplomatic missions to the courts of Cochinchina and Muscat and Oman during the years 1832–6. Roberts concluded treaties with Thailand and Said bin Sultan, Sultan of Muscat and Oman, ratified in Washington, D. C. 30 June 1834. He returned in 1836 to exchange ratifications with Oman and Thailand and to the court of Minh Mạng in Cochinchina for a second attempt at negotiation, he fell ill with dysentery and died in Portuguese Macau, which precluded his becoming America's first envoy to Edo Japan. Roberts was born 29 June 1784 to Sarah Griffiths of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Royal Navy Captain Edmund Roberts, who died 15 November 1787 and was interred in North Cemetery leaving his son a half-orphan in his mother's care. Young Edmund at age 13 received through his congressman a Midshipman's warrant in the United States Navy, but waived the appointment at his mother's wish for him to remain at home while she lived.
Roberts put to sea in 1800 residing in London until age 24. Returning in 1808, he married Miss Catherine Whipple Langdon — daughter of Judge Woodbury Langdon and niece of Governor John Langdon, both of whom were engaged in the New England triangular trade between Portsmouth, the Caribbean and London. Of the couple's 11 children, 8 survived their parents. New Hampshire, with only 16 miles of coast line, the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Maine are credited with shaping Roberts' character. Roberts entered the New England triangular trade as shipowner and his own supercargo, but never as a captain. Robert Hopkins Miller says Roberts lost his accumulated wealth in a series of misfortunes, but succeeded in 1823 in being appointed US Consul at Demerara. However, Miller erroneously places Demerara on the east coast of Africa, does not mention the Demerara rebellion of 1823."The 1823 revolt had a special significance...t attracted attention in Britain inside and outside Parliament to the terrible evil slavery and the need to abolish it."
Roberts' own account mentions neither Demerara nor the slave revolt but his palpable aversion to slavery colors his negotiating stance, where subjects act as slaves to the king). By 1827, nearly impoverished by depredations of French and Spanish privateers on his ships in the West Indies, he chartered the Mary Ann to trade in the Indian Ocean. Roberts arrived in the port of Zanzibar in October 1827, the next year, had an audience with the newly arrived Said bin Sultan, Sultan of Muscat and Oman, so anxious to counterbalance British influence that he asked Roberts to escort some vessels to the United States to petition for trade. Upon returning, he wrote U. S. Senator Levi Woodbury, a personal friend, of the aggravations endured by American shipping, that might be alleviated by negotiating commercial treaties; the stage was set for Roberts diplomatic career by Salem's trade with the East Indies. Pursuits of members of the East India Marine Society, established in 1799 and composed of those who had sailed beyond the Cape of Good Hope or Cape Horn as masters or supercargoes contributed to the beginnings of US international relations during the period of 1788 to 1845.
From 1826 to 1832, John Shillaber, American consul in Batavia, sent a series of letters suggesting that he be empowered to negotiate trade treaties. Martin van Buren replied in a letter dated 13 December 1830, sent over the signature of clerk Daniel Brent, requesting a more precise knowledge of the nature and character of the governments in question, more details on difficulties encountered. Matters came to a head after Charles Moses Endicott, master of the merchantman Friendship of Salem, engaged in the spice trade on the Sumatran coast, returned to report the brig Governor Endicott of Salem, the James Monroe of New York, had recaptured his ship from pirates who had plundered her, murdering several crewmen. In the wake of public outcry, President Jackson ordered Commodore John Downes of the frigate Potomac, preparing to sail for the west coast, to proceed instead on the first Sumatran expedition, departing New York harbour 19 August 1831. Fortune favours Roberts, his friend Woodbury, who as senator had been pressing for increased naval appropriations when he received Robert's letter on the need for trade negotiations, had just become Jackson's Secretary of the Navy and saw an opportunity.
As the Potomac was departing the schooner Boxer was nearing commissioning. Woodbury convinced Jackson to send both 10-gun ships to support Potomac – with Roberts as Jackson's "special agent". Secretary of State Edward Livingston's "Instructions to Special Agent Edmund Roberts" signed 27 January 1832, order him to embark upon Peacock in the guise of the captain's clerk, his mission's purpose concealed except from the Captain and those with a need to know. Livingston adds a postscript. Jackson explains to the Senate in his message of 30 May 1834, "The expenses of the agency have been defrayed out of the contingent fund for foreign intercourse". In mid-February 1832, Boxer is dispatched to Liberia. With orders to join the Peacock off the coast of Brazil, but the ships fail to rendezvous until 5 June 1834 – in the unhealthy roadstead of Batavia. In March 1832, Peacock sails for Brazil under Com
Virtual International Authority File
The Virtual International Authority File is an international authority file. It is a joint project of several national libraries and operated by the Online Computer Library Center. Discussion about having a common international authority started in the late 1990s. After a series of failed attempts to come up with a unique common authority file, the new idea was to link existing national authorities; this would present all the benefits of a common file without requiring a large investment of time and expense in the process. The project was initiated by the US Library of Congress, the German National Library and the OCLC on August 6, 2003; the Bibliothèque nationale de France joined the project on October 5, 2007. The project transitioned to being a service of the OCLC on April 4, 2012; the aim is to link the national authority files to a single virtual authority file. In this file, identical records from the different data sets are linked together. A VIAF record receives a standard data number, contains the primary "see" and "see also" records from the original records, refers to the original authority records.
The data are available for research and data exchange and sharing. Reciprocal updating uses the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting protocol; the file numbers are being added to Wikipedia biographical articles and are incorporated into Wikidata. VIAF's clustering algorithm is run every month; as more data are added from participating libraries, clusters of authority records may coalesce or split, leading to some fluctuation in the VIAF identifier of certain authority records. Authority control Faceted Application of Subject Terminology Integrated Authority File International Standard Authority Data Number International Standard Name Identifier Wikipedia's authority control template for articles Official website VIAF at OCLC
Cape Town
Cape Town is the oldest city in South Africa, colloquially named the Mother City. It is primate city of the Western Cape province, it forms part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality. The Parliament of South Africa sits in Cape Town; the other two capitals are located in Bloemfontein. The city is known for its harbour, for its natural setting in the Cape Floristic Region, for landmarks such as Table Mountain and Cape Point. Cape Town is home to 64% of the Western Cape's population, it is one of the most multicultural cities in the world, reflecting its role as a major destination for immigrants and expatriates to South Africa. The city was named the World Design Capital for 2014 by the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design. In 2014, Cape Town was named the best place in the world to visit by both The New York Times and The Daily Telegraph. Located on the shore of Table Bay, Cape Town, as the oldest urban area in South Africa, was developed by the Dutch East India Company as a supply station for Dutch ships sailing to East Africa and the Far East.
Jan van Riebeeck's arrival on 6 April 1652 established Dutch Cape Colony, the first permanent European settlement in South Africa. Cape Town outgrew its original purpose as the first European outpost at the Castle of Good Hope, becoming the economic and cultural hub of the Cape Colony; until the Witwatersrand Gold Rush and the development of Johannesburg, Cape Town was the largest city in South Africa. Cape Town is not just the city centre area, its suburbs and non-urban areas extend from the South Peninsula to beyond Mamre in the north and as far east as Gordon's Bay; the earliest known remnants in the region were found at Peers Cave in Fish Hoek and date to between 15,000 and 12,000 years ago. Little is known of the history of the region's first residents, since there is no written history from the area before it was first mentioned by Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias in 1488, the first European to reach the area and named it "Cape of Storms", it was renamed by John II of Portugal as "Cape of Good Hope" because of the great optimism engendered by the opening of a sea route to India and the East.
Vasco da Gama recorded a sighting of the Cape of Good Hope in 1497. In the late 16th century, French, Danish and English but Portuguese ships stopped over in Table Bay en route to the Indies, they traded tobacco and iron with the Khoikhoi in exchange for fresh meat. In 1652, Jan van Riebeeck and other employees of the Dutch East India Company were sent to the Cape to establish a way-station for ships travelling to the Dutch East Indies, the Fort de Goede Hoop; the settlement grew during this period, as it was hard to find adequate labour. This labour shortage prompted the authorities to import slaves from Madagascar. Many of these became ancestors of the first Cape Coloured communities. Under Van Riebeeck and his successors as VOC commanders and governors at the Cape, an impressive range of useful plants were introduced to the Cape – in the process changing the natural environment forever; some of these, including grapes, ground nuts, potatoes and citrus, had an important and lasting influence on the societies and economies of the region.
The Dutch Republic being transformed in Revolutionary France's vassal Batavian Republic, Great Britain moved to take control of its colonies. Britain captured Cape Town in 1795, but the Cape was returned to the Dutch by treaty in 1803. British forces occupied the Cape again in 1806 following the Battle of Blaauwberg. In the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814, Cape Town was permanently ceded to Britain, it became the capital of the newly formed Cape Colony, whose territory expanded substantially through the 1800s. With expansion came calls for greater independence from Britain, with the Cape attaining its own parliament and a locally accountable Prime Minister. Suffrage was established according to sexist Cape Qualified Franchise; the discovery of diamonds in Griqualand West in 1867, the Witwatersrand Gold Rush in 1886, prompted a flood of immigrants to South Africa. Conflicts between the Boer republics in the interior and the British colonial government resulted in the Second Boer War of 1899–1902, which Britain won.
In 1910, Britain established the Union of South Africa, which unified the Cape Colony with the two defeated Boer Republics and the British colony of Natal. Cape Town became the legislative capital of the Union, of the Republic of South Africa. In the 1948 national elections, the National Party won on a platform of apartheid under the slogan of "swart gevaar"; this led to the erosion and eventual abolition of the Cape's multiracial franchise, as well as to the Group Areas Act, which classified all areas according to race. Multi-racial suburbs of Cape Town were either purged of unlawful residents or demolished; the most infamous example of this in Cape Town was District Six. After it was declared a whites-only region in 1965, all housing there was demolished and over 60,000 residents were forcibly removed. Many of these residents were relocated to the Cape Lavender Hill. Under apartheid, the Cape was considered a "Coloured labour preference area", to the exclusion of "Bantus", i.e. Africans. School students from Langa and Nyanga in Cape Town reacted to the news of
National Library of Somalia
The National Library of Somalia is a national library in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia. The National Library was established in 1975, was open to the general public. In 1983, it held 7,000 books, with limited historical and cultural archival material; the National Library closed down in the 1990s during the Somali Civil War. In June 2013, the Heritage Institute for Policy Studies organized a shipment of 22,000 books from the United States to Somalia as part of an initiative to restock the library. In December of that year, the Somali authorities launched a major project to rebuild the National Library. With Zainab Hassan serving as Director, the $1 million federal government-funded initiative intends for a new library complex to be built in the capital within six months. In preparation for the relaunch, 60,000 additional books from other Arab League states are expected to arrive
National library
A national library is a library established by a government as a country's preeminent repository of information. Unlike public libraries, these allow citizens to borrow books, they include numerous rare, valuable, or significant works. A National Library is that library which has the duty of collecting and preserving the literature of the nation within and outside the country. Thus, National Libraries are those libraries. Examples include the British Library, the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris. There are wider definitions of a national library, putting less emphasis to the repository character. National libraries are notable for their size, compared to that of other libraries in the same country; some states which are not independent, but who wish to preserve their particular culture, have established a national library with all the attributes of such institutions, such as legal deposit. Many national libraries cooperate within the National Libraries Section of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions to discuss their common tasks and promote common standards and carry out projects helping them to fulfill their duties.
National libraries of Europe participate in The European Library. This is a service of The Conference of European National Librarians; the first national libraries had their origins in the royal collections of the sovereign or some other supreme body of the state. One of the first plans for a national library was devised by the English mathematician John Dee, who in 1556 presented Mary I of England with a visionary plan for the preservation of old books and records and the founding of a national library, but his proposal was not taken up. In England, Sir Richard Bentley's Proposal for Building a Royal Library published in 1694 stimulated renewed interest in the subject. Sir Robert Cotton, 1st Baronet, of Connington, a wealthy antiquarian, amassed the richest private collection of manuscripts in the world at the time and founded the Cotton Library. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries, many priceless and ancient manuscripts that had belonged to the monastic libraries began to be disseminated among various owners, many of whom were unaware of the cultural value of the manuscripts.
Sir Robert's genius was in finding and preserving these ancient documents. After his death his grandson donated the library to the nation as its first national library; this transfer established the formation of the British Library. The first true national library was founded in 1753 as part of the British Museum; this new institution was the first of a new kind of museum – national, belonging to neither church nor king open to the public and aiming to collect everything. The museum's foundations lay in the will of the physician and naturalist Sir Hans Sloane, who gathered an enviable collection of curiosities over his lifetime which he bequeathed to the nation for £20,000. Sloane's collection included some 40,000 printed books and 7,000 manuscripts, as well as prints and drawings; the British Museum Act 1753 incorporated the Cotton library and the Harleian library. These were joined in 1757 by the Royal Library, assembled by various British monarchs; the first exhibition galleries and reading room for scholars opened on 15 January 1759, in 1757, King George II granted it the right to a copy of every book published in the country, thereby ensuring that the Museum's library would expand indefinitely.
Anthony Panizzi became the Principal Librarian at the British Museum in 1856, where he oversaw its modernization. During his tenure, the Library's holdings increased from 235,000 to 540,000 volumes, making it the largest library in the world at the time, its famous circular Reading Room was opened in 1857. Panizzi undertook the creation of a new catalogue, based on the "Ninety-One Cataloguing Rules" which he devised with his assistants; these rules served as the basis for all subsequent catalogue rules of the 19th and 20th centuries, are at the origins of the ISBD and of digital cataloguing elements such as Dublin Core. In France, the first national library was the Bibliothèque Mazarine, which evolved from its origin as a royal library founded at the Louvre Palace by Charles V in 1368. At the death of Charles VI, this first collection was unilaterally bought by the English regent of France, the Duke of Bedford, who transferred it to England in 1424, it was dispersed at his death in 1435. The invention of printing resulted in the starting of another collection in the Louvre inherited by Louis XI in 1461.
Francis I transferred the collection in 1534 to Fontainebleau and merged it with his private library. The appointment of Jacques Auguste de Thou as librarian in the 17th century, initiated a period of development that made it the largest and richest collection of books in the world; the library opened to the public in 1692, under the administration of Abbé Louvois, Minister Louvois's son. Abbé Louvois was succeeded by the Abbé Bignon, or Bignon II as he was termed, who instituted a complete reform of the library's system. Catalogues were made; the collections increased by purchase and gift to the outbreak of the French Revolution, at which time it was in grave danger of partial or total destruction, but owing to the activities of Antoine-Augustin Renouard and Joseph Van Praet it suffered no injury. The library's collections swelled to over 300,000 volumes during the radical phase of the French Revolution when the private libraries of aristocrats and clergy were seized. After the establishment of the French First Republic in September 1792, "the Assembly declared the Bibliotheque du Roi to be national property and the institution was renamed the Bibliothèque Nationale
National Library of Mozambique
The National Library of Mozambique is located in Maputo, Mozambique. It is located in a structure which housed the Office of Finance of the Colony of Mozambique, it was designed by the architect Mario Veiga in 1904, is located on 25 de Setembro Avenue. The organizational structure of the National Library of Mozambique was created by Diploma Ministerial of the Mozambican Ministry of Culture no. 103/92 of July 22. It established four units for the National Library, namely: The Directorate, responsible for the overall management of the library. Department of Preservation and Conservation, responsible for the conservation and binding of materials of the National Library. Division of Administration and Finance, which manages the basic administration and human resources, public relations for the National Library, it coordinates the National Public Libraries System of Mozambique. Arquivo Histórico de Moçambique List of national libraries Marcel Lajeunesse, ed.. "Mozambique". Les Bibliothèques nationales de la francophonie.
Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec. OCLC 401164333
