Brief history of OCLC activities with national libraries outside the U.S.

August 26, 1971  The OCLC Online Union Catalog, now called WorldCat, goes online

1975

Library and Archives Canada begins adding records for serial publications to WorldCat via the CONSER program

1978

Koninklijke Bibliotheek (The National Library of the Netherlands) obtains 400,000 records from WorldCat

1985

The British Library begins adding UKMARC records to WorldCat, which since has resulted in 4.3 million records

1987

The National Library of Scotland begins adding records to WorldCat

1987

The National Library of Wales begins contributing records to WorldCat

1991

Six staff members from the National Library of China spend a year at OCLC creating a computerized catalog of Chinese books for WorldCat

1991

The National Library of Spain begins adding records to WorldCat

1991

The National Library of Turkey becomes an OCLC member and begins using the OCLC online system for cataloging

1992

The National Library of Australia begins contributing records to WorldCat

1992

The National and University Library of Iceland begins adding records to WorldCat

1995

The National Library of the Czech Republic begins contributing records to WorldCat

1997

The National Library of New Zealand begins contributing records to WorldCat

1998

The National Library of Ireland begins adding records to WorldCat

1999

The National Library of Lithuania begins contributing records to WorldCat

1999

The National Library of South Africa begins adding records to WorldCat

2000

Library and Archives Canada begins loading records directly into WorldCat

2002

1.4 million holdings from the Singapore National Union Catalog are added to WorldCat

2003

Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (The German National Library), the Library of Congress and OCLC agree to develop a Virtual International Authority File

2003

The Chilean Directorate of Libraries, Archives, and Museums (DIBAM) of the National Library and the 368 public libraries it manages in Chile become governing members and begin contributing their current cataloging to WorldCat

2004

The National Library of Australia selects the OCLC Central Library System to support the Australian National Bibliographic Database and Kinetica system, the Internet-based service for Australian libraries and their users

2004

410,000 holdings from the National Library of Chile—including 230,000 original records—are added to WorldCat

2004

Bibliothèque nationale de France begins contributing records to WorldCat

2005

The National Library of Jamaica begins using CONTENTdm to digitize Jamaican heritage materials

2005

The National Library of Finland adds more than 600,000 new records from the Finnish national bibliography into WorldCat

2005

The Iraqi National Library and Archive begins adding records to WorldCat

2006

Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (The German National Library) adds 4 million new records to WorldCat

2006

The Dutch Union Catalog (more than 9 million records) is added to WorldCat, resulting in 4 million new records and over 20 million holdings

2007

The National Library of Mexico agrees to add its catalog to WorldCat

2007

The Swiss National Library loads 1.3 million records to WorldCat

2007

The National Library of New Zealand loads 4 million records and the holdings of 275 New Zealand libraries to WorldCat

2007

The National Library of Australia loads 17 million records and the holdings of more than 800 Australian libraries into WorldCat

2007

Kungl. Bibliotheket (the National Library of Sweden) loads 2 million records into WorldCat

2008

The National Library of China agrees to load 1.5 million records into WorldCat

2008

The National Library Service, Barbados loads 91,673 holdings into WorldCat

2008

The National Library of Israel loads more than 788,000 records into WorldCat