Assessment of GOBI OCLC Plus service

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Recommendation

The OCLC Plus service contract is up for renewal on June 30 of every year. Costs are distributed proportionately to campuses in an annual lump sum (recharged for the first time in September 2021). Now that we have a full year’s record data available, it is recommended that campuses carefully review which kinds of materials they are receiving on various GOBI subaccounts, and apply the new UC’s Systemwide Cataloging Services (GOBI’s OCLC Plus) on those subaccounts they feel are most beneficial. Campuses should be aware that usage/nonusage of this contract can have impacts on our negotiating position as it impacts volume of records received, and they should make sure these decisions include the relevant AULs, especially those involved with SCLG. It also impacts the setting of holdings in OCLC.

If there is interest/concern on your campus, we suggest a detailed analysis at each campus on the time/cost impacts of the Gold Plus program, especially for electronic materials, that can later be aggregated to get a better idea of how this would impact the systemwide contract. The Acq Operations Subgroup is not a decision making body regarding this contract, but is well suited for providing background or advice on the details of where records provided enhance workflows, cause wrinkles, or may be redundant. February or March of 2023, this team will review the issue.

Impact

Reasoning

For many, especially smaller campuses, paying to import the fifth (or more) copy of a record for a popular title is an expensive contradiction to the systemwide benefits SILS is trying to achieve. We hope to determine where the UCs are paying multiple time for the same data, and how we can eliminate such duplication.

Background

Many smaller campuses are struggling with expenses associated with the new GOBI OCLC Plus contract. It’s also been observed that in many cases the records feel redundant or overpriced for the data received, especially with the new WorldCat Daily Updates subscription.

While testing the GOBI API for the Brief Order Records in the NZ/IZ decision page, UCI also managed to generate a sample set of records where we could determine a general ratio of titles which already had full OCLC records available, and which needed GOBI enhancement. Ratios appeared consistent between physical and electronic titles. Roughly 20-25% of titles needed GOBI intervention, and the rest had existing fully cataloged OCLC records.

For electronic resources, the option of linking to CZ records is a possibility that may not have been well understood during the initial contract negotiations and Alma configuration. https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/1zZZ0J8sONfLtRJQ3SgvKeTYlweKF4iej Analysis of OCLC records compared to CZ records indicates some vendors have ~50% without subject headings, but full title info. deGruyter has much better quality records than this ratio, and we’re looking forward to analyzing additional vendors.

Options Considered [remove if not needed]

Dependencies

Questions to consider

The OCLC Plus service also updates holdings in OCLC, which impacts which records are involved in the WorldCat Daily Updates. This may introduce another report/job that staff will need to run if the OCLC Plus service is discontinued for a given GOBI subaccount.

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