FYI - latest OCLC news Ksenija Obradovic Cataloguing Manager Te Tumu Herenga The University of Auckland Library Private Bag 92019 Auckland Mail Centre Auckland 1142 New Zealand Telephone (649) 373-7599 ext 85797 Fax (649) 373-7401 http://www.library.auckland.ac.nz ________ OCLC announces Expert Community Experiment In response to requests from the cataloging community, OCLC is introducing the Expert Community Experiment, which enables OCLC members to make more changes to WorldCat records. During the Experiment, OCLC libraries with full-level cataloging authorizations will have the ability to improve and upgrade WorldCat master bibliographic records. The additional capabilities provided by the Experiment are an expansion of those that have been available through various database enrichment programs since 1991. The Experiment begins in February 2009 and will last six months. Introductory Web information sessions will be held throughout February for those interested in participating in the Experiment. OCLC hopes that these changes will result in more corrections and additions to master bibliographic records and more timely actions to correct record problems. The Experiment is inspired by long-standing requests from members to be able to do more-and more immediate-upgrading of WorldCat records. The Experiment also allows OCLC to test a "social cataloging" model involving the existing community of cataloging experts who have built WorldCat record-by-record over the past four decades. Interest in such an experiment has grown with the launch of WorldCat Local and with the popularity of other socially cooperative ventures, such as Wikipedia. http://www.oclc.org/worldcat/catalog/quality/expert/default.htm