OCLC's firstsearch: A reference tool still evolving

Abstract

OCLC entered the 1990s with a bold marketing move, signalling its expansion beyond the traditional library world and into the competitive end‐user market, with the introduction of FirstSearch. In the spring of 1991, sixteen libraries throughout the United States, among them the University of New Mexico General Library, became test sites for FirstSearch. After numerous changes prompted by test site users, First‐Search (né Maximum Catalog) was officially released in October 1991. It is currently available to OCLC‐member libraries and to library schools. FirstSearch, the end‐user version of OCLC's earlier release, EPIC, inaugurates end‐user access to the largest book database in the world, OCLC's Online Union Catalog or “WorldCat,” as well as selected periodical indexes. On the first day of public release, six databases were available on FirstSearch; that number increased to 23 by August 1992 (see figure 1), and OCLC is negotiating with database producers to add others to the system.