OCLC - History

History

Originally named the Ohio College Library Center, OCLC began in 1967 through a collaboration of Ohio university presidents, vice presidents, and library directors who wanted to create a cooperative, computerized network for Ohio libraries. The group first met on July 5, 1967 on the campus of Ohio State University to sign the articles of incorporation for the nonprofit organization. The group hired Frederick G. Kilgour, a former Yale University medical school librarian, to design the shared cataloging system Kilgour wished to merge the latest information storage and retrieval system of the time, the computer, with the oldest, the library. His vision of an active rather than passive system where the library would go to the people was a rather revolutionary idea for 1967. The plan was to merge the catalogs of Ohio libraries electronically through a computer network and database in order to streamline operations, control costs, and increase efficiency in library management. The goal of this network and database was to bring libraries together to cooperatively keep track of the world’s information in order to best serve researchers and scholars. The first library to do online cataloging through OCLC was the Alden Library at Ohio University on August 26, 1971. This was the first occurrence of online cataloging by any library worldwide.