Australia's national research collection: overlap, uniqueness and distrbution

Abstract

This paper reports on the results of an overlap study of Australian research library collections. The study used OCLC's WorldCat Collection Analysis software to mine data recording Australian holdings on the WorldCat database. The data is analysed according to the results obtained for six ‘groups’ which represent various coalitions of academic, national/state, and special libraries. The data is focussed on the incidence and distribution of overlap and unique items, and the analysis considers the implications for the future management of the nation’s research collection.