Karen Calhoun named Vice President,
OCLC WorldCat and Metadata Services

DUBLIN, Ohio, March 20, 2007-Karen Calhoun, Senior Associate University Librarian for Information Technology and Technical Services at Cornell University Library, has joined the OCLC Online Computer Library Center leadership team as Vice President, OCLC WorldCat and Metadata Services.

Ms. Calhoun will join OCLC effective May 14.  The move was part of a reorganization at OCLC designed to achieve global integration of services provided by the world's largest library cooperative.  

Ms. Calhoun is no stranger to OCLC-she worked for OCLC from 1986 through 1996, serving in the OCLC Library Resources Management Division before joining Cornell.  Since joining Cornell in January 1997, she held a number of positions in the Library, with her most recent promotion to Senior Associate University Librarian in October 2006.

Active professionally in research and as a speaker, Ms. Calhoun was principal investigator for The Changing Nature of the Catalog and its Integration with Other Discovery Tools, a Library of Congress-commissioned study on the future of the catalog.  The report, released in March 2006, challenged assumptions about the traditional library catalog and proposes new directions for the research library catalog in the digital era.

"Karen Calhoun is an internationally respected librarian and thought leader, and we're confident that her expertise and vision will be instrumental in continuing to build WorldCat and extend its global reach.  She will lead OCLC's efforts to chart a course for the future of cataloging and metadata services," said Jay Jordan, OCLC President and CEO.

"OCLC is stepping up to the challenges of the digital age and helping libraries around the world find new ways to excel," said Ms. Calhoun. "The chance to work with the OCLC global leadership team is tremendously exciting to me."

The WorldCat database continues to grow at an extraordinary rate, with millions of records entered into the world's largest bibliographic resource coming from outside the United States.  In the past several years, OCLC has added international files from the National Library of Germany's bibliography, Dutch Union Catalogue, LinkUK, Toronto Public Library, University of Manitoba, University of Gottingen, National Library of Education in Denmark, the National Union Catalog of Poland, and more.  OCLC expects to process more than 38 million records fromoutside the United States in 2007, including national bibliographies from New Zealand and Sweden, to name a couple.

About OCLC

Founded in 1967 and headquartered in Dublin, Ohio, OCLC Online Computer
Library Center is a nonprofit library membership and research
organization that has provided computer-based cataloging, reference,
resource sharing, eContent and preservation services to 57,000 libraries
in 112 countries and territories.  OCLC and its member libraries
worldwide have created and maintain WorldCat, the world's richest online
resource for finding library materials.  For more information, visit
www.oclc.org.

 

OCLC and WorldCat are trademarks and/or service marks
of OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc.

Third-party product, service and business names are trademarks and/or
service marks of their respective owners.

-0-