From=20your OCLC Users' Council Delegates:
Lee Hadden Bernard Strong Marcia Talley
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ph: 703-648-6088 ph: 202-287-9463 ph: 410-293-6905
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Nita Dean +1-614-761-5002
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OCLC ISSUES 1995/96 ANNUAL REPORT
DUBLIN, Ohio, Nov. 12, 1996*OCLC has issued its 1995/96 Annual Report, the
29th for the international, nonprofit, computer library service and researc=
h
organization.
In his letter to the membership, K. Wayne Smith, OCLC president and chief
executive officer, stated that fiscal 1996 was another record-breaking year
for OCLC: *For the third year in a row, we set new standards in all of the
significant ways we measure our performance and our contribution to the
membership.*
Dr. Smith noted that OCLC continued to focus on three priorities: enhancin=
g
cataloging and resource sharing services, building a new core business in
online reference services and electronic publishing, and expanding
internationally.
For the year ended June 30, 1996, OCLC*s revenues were $148 million, up 3.5
percent from the previous year. Contribution to equity was $7.2 million, u=
p
24.3 percent from the previous year.
OCLC vigorously pursued its chartered objective of reducing the rate of ris=
e
of library costs by providing libraries with $8.6 million in cataloging and
resource sharing credits and holding the line on prices for core products i=
n
cataloging and resource sharing for the sixth consecutive year. OCLC
provided libraries with some $1.6 million in credits for trading in
approximately 3,000 older workstations for new, state-of-the-art machines.
OCLC also completed, on time and under budget, a $15 million construction
project that converted an existing warehouse on its 90-acre campus to 40,00=
0
square feet of badly needed conference and training facilities and 167,000
square feet of office space.
The OCLC PRISM service continued to be the largest and most heavily used
cataloging and resource sharing system in the world. In 1996:
=95 the number of participating libraries increased from 21,148 to 22,645.
=95 Libraries cataloged 22.4 million items online.
=95 2.1 million cataloging records were added to the OCLC Online Union
Catalog. Location listings grew from 562 million to 602 million.
=95 7.9 million interlibrary loans were arranged online.
=95 Hours of operation for cataloging and resource sharing increased to 163=
of
the 168 hours in a week.
FirstSearch was the fastest growing end-user reference system in the librar=
y
community for the third straight year and the second most-used system in th=
e
information community.
=95 FirstSearch users performed nearly 25 million searches, an increase of =
57
percent over the previous year.
=95 OCLC added eight databases to FirstSearch, including NetFirst, a direct=
ory
of Internet resources created by professional abstractors and indexers at
OCLC. There are now 60 databases available on FirstSearch.
OCLC continued to be a leader in electronic, scholarly publishing. OCLC
FirstSearch Electronic Collections Online, due out in 1997, will provide
library users with the ability to find full-text journal information from
many publishers in a single discipline.
OCLC*s international activities also grew. In fiscal 1996, more than 300
new, international libraries became OCLC participating libraries; more than
1,500 libraries in 62 countries outside the U.S. now participate in OCLC.
In partnership with Tsinghua University, OCLC opened an OCLC Service Cente=
r
in Beijing, China.
The 1995/96 OCLC Annual Report pays tribute to the 25th anniversary of the
OCLC Online Union Catalog, the world*s foremost bibliographic database.
Over the past 25 years, libraries have entered over 35 million records and
added more than 600 million location listings. It is now the most consulte=
d
database in higher education, spanning over 4,000 years of recorded
knowledge in 370 languages.
Hard copies of the report can be obtained by writing to: OCLC, 1995/96
Annual Report, MC 104, 6565 Frantz Rd., Dublin, Ohio 43017-3395, or by
sending an e-mail message to: [log in to unmask] The annual report
is also available on the World Wide Web through the OCLC Home Page
[http://www.oclc.org/] under *About OCLC,* *What*s New* and *General
Publications* [http://www.oclc.org/oclc/ar96/anreport.htm/].
OCLC Online Computer Library Center is a nonprofit computer library service
and research organization whose computer network and services link more tha=
n
23,000 libraries in 63 countries and territories. More information is
available at the OCLC Web site
[http://www.oclc.org/]. (GP)
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