OCLC president to speak at UD April 26

11:13 a.m., April 19, 2005--The president and chief executive officer of the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), Robert L. “Jay” Jordan, will visit the University on Tuesday, April 26, as the guest of UD President David P. Roselle.

Jordan will make a presentation at 4 p.m., Tuesday, April 26, in the Trabant University Center Theatre. All members of the University community are invited to attend. A reception in the area adjacent to the theatre will follow.

Jordan became OCLC’s fourth president on May 11, 1998. Before joining OCLC, he was associated with Information Handling Services Group, Englewood, Colo., for 24 years. He received a bachelor's degree in English literature from Colgate University in 1966, and he served as an officer in the U.S. Army from 1966-69.

Founded in 1967, OCLC is a nonprofit, membership, computer library service and research organization dedicated to furthering access to the world's information and reducing information costs.

More than 50,000 libraries in 84 countries and territories around the world use OCLC services to locate, acquire, catalog, lend and preserve library materials.

OCLC is perhaps known by scholars and faculty for its WorldCat database, which contains bibliiographic information about more than 57 million items held by libraries around the world. WorldCat, which is updated daily and is available from the UD Library home page (under "Databases"), covers thousands of subjects and includes information for items dating as far back as 1000 A.D.

WorldCat includes records for a wide range of materials, including books, computer data files, computer programs, films, journals, magazines, manuscripts, musical scores, newspapers, slides, sound recordings and videotapes. WorldCat does not include individual articles, stories in journals, magazines, newspapers or book chapters.

Roselle serves as a member of the OCLC board of trustees, having been elected in November 2004. OCLC’s 15-member board of trustees consists of the OCLC president and eight trustees elected by the board itself, five of whom come from fields outside librarianship. The other six board members are elected by the OCLC Members Council, a group of 66 worldwide representatives who support OCLC’s mission by serving as the key discussion forum and communications link between member libraries, regional networks and other partners, and OCLC management.

E-mail this article

To learn how to subscribe to UDaily, click here.