2702 OCLC to launch Open WorldCat

When we moved to Columbus, OH in 1967 and I was a Slavic cataloguer at Ohio State University Libraries, what was to become OCLC was located in the main library on the third floor, and had 3 or 4 employees. I was new in town and used to lunch with one of the female employees who also didn't know anyone--although I've forgotten her name and she moved on, as did I (to be a stay at home mom).
Mr. Kilgour's belief that there must be a better way to manage bibliographic information proved true (he died yesterday at age 92), and the Ohio College Library Consortium, which I think was its name then, grew and grew, moved out of the library building over to Kinnear Road, and then built a huge facility in Dublin, Ohio. In 1983, when my kids were teens, I worked for OhioNet, a vendor for OCLC's services to Ohio libraries. By that time, it was a world wide bibliographic network offering many library services.
Here's the item from Information Today. "In a move designed to reach users outside library environments, OCLC (http://www.oclc.org) is planning to launch a new destination site and downloadable search box for searching the content of libraries participating in WorldCat. Scheduled for a beta release sometime in August 2006, the new WorldCat.org site will continue OCLC’s efforts begun with its Open WorldCat program (http://www.oclc.org/worldcat/open/default.htm)—to make library resources more visible to Web users and to increase awareness of libraries as a primary source of reliable information. The WorldCat.org search box will make visible all 70-plus million records in the WorldCat database—not just the smaller data subsets of 3.4 to 4.4 million currently made available by the Open WorldCat partner sites, such as Google, Yahoo!, and others. And, where Open WorldCat inserts “Find in a Library” results within regular search engine results—where they can get lost—WorldCat.org promises to provide greater visibility and accessibility of library materials."

OCLC
WorldCat
Frederick G. Kilgour