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ATLA & PALNI OCLC 
WMS Pre-Conference
Panel Discussion: Knowledge Base 
Management of Open Access Resources
Lisa Gonzalez, PALNI

Jeff Siemon, Anderson University

Heather Loehr, PALNI

Karl Stutzman, Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary

Focusing on Open Access in WMS
Lisa Gonzalez, PALNI

Considering that open access (OA) collections contributed by both 
vendors and other libraries represent significant financial invest-
ment by institutions through either APCs (article processing charges), 
membership support, or other investment in the scholarly commu-
nication infrastructure, libraries should evaluate OA collections that 
match their collection development policy subject priorities. Since 
OA material may be aggregated inconsistently in diverse locations, 
adding OA content to the library’s discovery system provides another 
avenue for patrons to discover quality content.

You can select OA collections broadly through WorldCat Discov-
ery or Collection Manager settings, or more granularly one collec-
tion at a time or even title-by-title. The basic information about 
OA collections on OCLC’s knowledge base collections list includes 
the size of the collection and the percentage of OCLC numbers that 
are linked to titles in the knowledge base. OCLC numbers connect 
e-resource title holdings to WorldCat records and to article cita-
tions in WorldCat.org and WorldCat Discovery based on the library’s 
coverage for titles. 

When evaluating OA collections in the knowledge base, selection 
criteria can include whether the collection is sufficiently focused on 
material relevant to your patrons, the quality of the metadata in terms 



4  ATL A 2018 PROCEEDINGS

of accurate description (title, URLs, identifiers), and if the material is 
actually available open access. When contributing OA collections to 
the knowledge base, consider providing the most complete metadata 
possible (full titles, ISBNs, OCLC numbers, accurate URLs) before 
submitting the collection to be shared. Tools such as the MarcEdit 
KBART plugin can help you quickly create a KBART file for your knowl-
edge base collection, which you can check for accuracy and complete-
ness before you create your collection in the knowledge base.

Tips for Fixing OCLC Knowledge Base 
Broken Links
Jeff Siemon, Anderson University

We’ll address the problem that patrons cannot find e-resources we 
provide, and have paid for, because many e-resources have poor meta-
data. Yukari Sugiyama writes, and I agree: 

E-resource discovery is almost entirely dependent upon 
metadata that is supplied by parties outside of the library. 
. . . Libraries now work in an environment where there are 
more interdependencies than ever; the successful provision 
of access to electronic resources is fully dependent on 
the transmission of high quality metadata throughout the 
e-resource supply chain.

We will cover some ways to improve OCLC knowledge base collec-
tions:

 •  Add subtitles to prevent incorrect matches in Discovery to books 
with similar titles (many are HathiTrust short titles).

 •  Add a primary=override OCLC Number (OCN) to knowledge base 
titles without primary OCNs.

 •  Change (override) a print book primary OCLC number with the 
best eBook OCN. 

 •  Add open access collections to your catalog.



Preconference Workshops  5

 •  Add free or open access journals not in any KB collection to the 
collection: “Other Free Journals” ID:freeAccess.misc.

One common problem is that OCLC Discovery links to a wrong book 
with the same title. The solution is as follows: 

 1.  In Discovery, follow the (wrong) link to the eBook in HathiTrust. 
Get the number from the URL of the (wrong) linking eBook (e.g., 
4287499), and note the subtitle or series title for that book.

 2.  In Collection Manager, search for your HathiTrust KB collection. 
Then search for the HathiTrust number, 4287499, in that collection.

 3.  Add a subtitle or series title to KB title. (You can add an author to 
the title if you have no other choice.)

 4. Save your changes (blue “Save” button).

Then contribute your changes to the knowledge base:

 5.  Click the drop-down box “Contribute Changes to the Global 
Collection.”

 6. Select “Add title edits to the Global Knowledge Base.”

 7.  In “summary of change” box, type something simple like “added 
subtitle.”

 8. Click “Continue.”

The result is that the wrong “Access online” link is gone from the 
1990 book with a similar title.

But there is “fine print” to this simple solution to fixing wrong 
links to similarly titled books. You will need to repeat these steps for 
each wrong HathiTrust link appearing in Discovery with the (usually 
more recent) book. 

Also, I delete most of the grouped OCNs in the HathiTrust knowl-
edge base record, leaving only a few of the OCNs for the most held 
correct print and eBook WorldCat records. It would be nice to check 
every OCN on the HathiTrust KB title record, but perfection takes too 
much time. The pros for deleting a wrong OCN outweigh the cons for 
deleting an extra correct OCN. Most of the correctly grouped OCNs will 
also be clustered in Discovery; thus, even when you delete a correct 
OCN from the KB record, the “View eBook” link will still appear on the 
cluster in Discovery. When you delete (wrong) group OCNs, you will 



6  ATL A 2018 PROCEEDINGS

have fixed “broken links” issues for other similar titles. Discovery is 
improved by adding OCLC numbers to KB collections.

A second common problem is that there is no “override” or primary 
OCLC number for a title in the OCLC knowledge base. When there is 
no primary OCN in the KB, then holdings are not set in WorldCat for 
libraries that use WMS for their catalog. And for non-WMS libraries, 
no MARC record is delivered to be loaded in their catalog. Therefore, 
that title shows up lower in search results, and that title will not display 
if the search is limited to My Library Holdings. The “Access online” 
link may still show up on a result, if it matches ISBN/ISSN or title, or 
if the OCN is in the KB in the “grouped OCNs” list.

The second common problem is also easy to fix by adding an “over-
ride” OCN to the OCLC knowledge base: 

 1.  Search WorldCat for the book/journal that has no OCN in the 
knowledge base and copy the OCLC number to the clipboard.

 2.  Go back to the knowledge base and paste the OCN in the “over-
ride” OCN field.

 3.  Save the record, and “Contribute Changes to the Global Collec-
tion” as above.

These titles that you’ve improved with OCLC numbers in the knowl-
edge base can now be discovered by and delivered to your patrons!

A third common problem is print book MARC record OCLC 
numbers that are the “override” or primary OCN in the knowledge 
base.  It looks like your library holds the print book, but you only hold 
the eBook. To correct a print OCN as the primary OCN in the KB:

 1.  Find the eBook title in the knowledge base; perhaps search by 
the (wrong) print OCN. Begin to edit that KB record. 

 2.  Search in WorldCat for an eBook MARC record for that book, and 
copy the eBook OCN.

 3.  Back in Collection Manager, in the KB record, paste the eBook 
OCN in the “override” OCN field.

 4.  Copy the current primary OCN, add it to the “grouped” OCNs, 
and save that OCN.

 5. Save the entire KB title record.

 6. Contribute the title edits to the global knowledge base.



Preconference Workshops  7

A fourth easy task to help your patrons is to add open access 
e-resources collections to your library catalog. Here’s how:

You can find open access collections in Collection Manager by 
searching for the word “open” or searching all collections and limit-
ing by the OA facet. A good place to start for seminaries is by search-
ing for “DTL Open.” This retrieves open access collections created by 
the Digital Theological Library, a project of Claremont.

All you need to do is click on the “Select” button near the right side 
of the results list, and these open access titles will show up in your 
WMS catalog. If you use another vendor, the MARC records for these 
titles will be delivered for you to load into your local catalog.

In addition to these four simple tasks, Jeff also showed slides about 
how to add a new open access journal to a knowledge base collection 
and how to add OCLC number to a collection using a KBART file.

Slides from this presentation may be found at: https://www.
slideshare.net/jsiemon/presentations

Recording: https://vimeo.com/237468207/00de177b16

Detailed instructions for adding multiple OCNs to an exist-
ing knowledge base collection may be found at: https://drive.
google.com/open?id=0B2sHKamxnI-dQmFkcUVmS1d4RTQ 
(about 50 pages).

A checklist for what to do when adding or canceling an 
e-resource or a database may be found at: https://docs.google.
com/document/d/1yuf4g-aRA6Fh7eJno4GtSryjEkI22gycalx-
hzdAHmsY/edit?usp=sharing.

Panel Discussion: Reporting and Statistics
Heather Loehr, PALNI 
Karl Stutzman, Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary

We discussed a brief history of the PALNI national survey support 
project, a collaborative effort between PALNI librarians to provide 
instruction and guidance on using WMS analytics and reports for 
data-gathering for the ACRL, IPEDS, and ATS surveys. 



8  ATL A 2018 PROCEEDINGS

We showed the common data points required by each survey and 
the available methods for addressing each one. Gathering needed 
data for national surveys presents a number of challenges for WMS 
libraries—including unclear survey instructions, limitations of stan-
dard (“out of the box”) reporting methods in WMS, and limitations of 
data universes for WMS Report Designer customers. We presented 
the first working draft for a help guide for the ATS survey, and we 
provided an overview of enhancement requests submitted to OCLC 
for system features and functions that can improve the efficiency of 
data-gathering, and the quality of the data gathered, to align as closely 
as possible with the needs of reporting libraries. 

Slides from this presentation may be found at: http://
libguides.palni.edu/ld.php?content_id=44679130.

PALNI’s National Survey Guides and Tutorials: http://
libguides.palni.edu/analytics/surveys

NOTES
1 Yukari Sugiyama, Marlene van Ballegooie, and Fabiano Takashi 

Rocha, “Harnessing the Power of the Cooperative: Improving 
Access to the JapanKnowledge E-Resource Collection,” Journal of 
East Asian Libraries no. 163 (October 2016).


