Librarian's Toolbox

Hours: Monday-Friday 7 am - 9 pm ET / 6am - 8 pm CT
Phone: 800.848.5800
Online support form: www.oclc.org/support/contact-support.en.html

KYVL's FirstSearch/WorldCat Discovery subscription provides staff and users of Kentucky libraries unlimited searching of WorldCat through FirstSearch and WorldCat Discovery, access to Kentucky libraries’ holdings on WorldCat.org, and inclusion of Kentucky libraries’ WorldCat holdings on search engines and popular websites such as Wikipedia, Goodreads and EasyBib, where people often begin their research.

• FirstSearch enables precision searching of WorldCat preferred by many library staff and expert searchers. It is also a valuable tool for finding items in other libraries’ collections, within your group and in thousands of libraries in the global OCLC cooperative.
• WorldCat Discovery provides broad searching of WorldCat and e-content collections that meets the needs of more general searchers.
• OCLC’s web visibility program helps libraries reach people who often don’t visit libraries by meeting them on the websites they visit regularly. Due to OCLC's extensive partnerships with search engines and popular sites such as Wikipedia and Goodreads, many people get to WorldCat.org from search engine results in as little as two clicks.

OCLC Central Index

WorldCat Discovery users, including KYVL members, have access to OCLC's Central Index, a continually growing repository of metadata of electronic resources such as articles, e-books, streaming videos and more. The index is vendor neutral and includes select items and collections from the major providers such as Gale, EBSCO, ProQuest, and others.

WorldCat Knowledge Base

OCLC cataloging subscribers also have access to the WorldCat Knowledge Base, which stores the data to indicate what a library has rights to and contains the linking logic the integrated OpenURL resolver uses to construct the links used to access those resources.

*****KYVL member libraries are invited to access the new FirstSearch Community Center*****

OCLC has announced a new FirstSearch Community Center, an online environment that provides an opportunity for FirstSearch users to connect through discussion boards, collaborate by sharing ideas and resources, and receive news directly from the FirstSearch product team.

Staff at all members of the KYVL group can access the Community Center.

Use existing credentials for other OCLC Community Centers—such as WorldCat Discovery or WorldShare Interlibrary Loan—to access the new FirstSearch Community Center. Anyone who does not have credentials can request them by submitting this form. Within 5 - 7 business days, OCLC will provide an email with instructions for how to update your OCLC Services account password and log in to the FirstSearch Community Center.

Please contact OCLC Support with questions about credentials for access to the FirstSearch Community Center.

Visit the OCLC Product Training site for a list of upcoming webinars on OCLC products.