WorldShare Circulation release notes, October 2022

General information

WMS Z39.50 will provide access to your library's holdings by searching global bibliographic data in WorldCat. At this time, your library's local bibliographic data and temporary items cannot be searched via Z39.50.

You may request up too 100 results per search with up to 20 results per page. Your institution will be limited to ten requests in any five-second period.

Results will always be sorted by relevance.

 Caution: The WMS Z39.50 Service is intended to support consortial borrowing, interlibrary loan, acquisition/selection, and some collection assessment workflows. This service is not intended to support cataloging activities (cannot create or update records in WMS), loading or refreshing records stored in a union catalog, or any process that needs to retrieve large record sets.

Record format options for presenting search results

WMS Z39.50 supports the following options for how records will be formatted in the response provided by WMS:

• MARC21
• OPAC

In Z39.50 terminology, these formats are options for 'presenting' records to the client.

Regardless of the format specified by the client, WMS will provide the following metadata for each search result:

• Bibliographic data from the global WorldCat record
• Local holdings data from your library's WorldCat local holdings records (LHRs)
• Real-time availability information from WorldShare Circulation for barcoded materials
  • Note that item status information will not be translated per your library's OPAC Statuses Grid for WorldCat Discovery. Item status will be provided as it appears in the WMS Availability API.
  • For example, if an item is in Available status in WorldShare Circulation, then Z39.50 will always provide availableNow value=1 even if the item's shelving location is treated as unavailable in WorldCat Discovery.

Please note WMS Z39.50 will not provide local bibliographic data or links to electronic resources from the WorldCat knowledge base.

Simple searches

Twelve simple searches are currently supported for the WMS Z39.50 Service. A simple search only requires the client to specify the index (use attribute) and term to be searched. Simple searches are easy for clients to configure and execute. In most cases, a simple search will be sufficient to discover your holdings by standard number, title, author, format, etc.

A client may combine multiple simple and/or complex searches to form an expert query. For example, a client can search for title = Harry Potter as well as title = Harry Potter AND publication date range = 1999-2001

Click here to see more details about simple searches

Search Type	Z39.50 Use Attribute Value
Author	1003
Date of Publication	31
Format / Type of Material	1031
ISBN	7
ISSN	8
Key Title	33
Keyword	1016
Language of Material	54
OCLC Number	1211
Standard Identifier	1007
Subject	21
Title	4

Complex searches defined by the Bath Profile 2.0

More complex, precise searches are sometimes needed to help a client find exactly what a user needs or expects.

The WMS Z39.50 Service supports an additional fourteen queries to support more precise searches. These complex searches follow the guidelines set by the Bath Profile on how to form and interpret queries using bib-1 attribute types and values. To learn more about bib-1 attributes, see the documentation provided by the Library of Congress.

The Bath Profile was developed in the late 1990s to further standardize bibliographic search and retrieval behaviors via Z39.50. The last revision of the profile was released in 2004. Guidelines were provided for search syntax, record presentation format, character sets, supported searches, error handling (diagnostics) and more. Copies of the Bath Profile can be found via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.

The WMS Z39.50 service supports the following complex searches as defined by the Bath Profile 2.0. These searches may be combined to form expert queries as well.

Click here to see more details about complex searches

Search Type	Bath Conformance Level & ID from Functional Area A	Use Attribute	Relation Attribute	Position Attribute	Structure Attribute	Truncation Attribute	Completeness Attribute
Author - Keyword	Level 0 - 5.A.0.1	1003	3	3	2	100	1
Title - Keyword	Level 0 - 5.A.0.1	4	3	3	2	100	1
Subject - Keyword	Level 0 - 5.A.0.3	21	3	3	2	100	1
Any Search - Keyword	Level 0 - 5.A.0.4	1016	3	3	2	100	1
Author - Exact Match	Level 1 - 5.A.1.2	1003	3	1	1	100	3
Title - Exact Match	Level 1 - 5.A.1.6	4	3	1	1	100	3
Subject - Exact Match	Level 1 - 5.A.1.10	21	3	1	1	100	3
Standard Identifier	Level 1 - 5.A.14	107	3	1	1	100	1
Date of Publication	Level 1 - 5.A.15	31	1, 2, 3, 4, or 5	1	4	100	1
Key Title - Keyword	Level 2 - 5.A.2.1	33	3	1	2	100	1
Key Title - Exact	Level 2 - 5.A.2.3	33	3	1	1	100	3
Format / Type of Material	Level 2 - 5.A.2.6 & 5.A.2.7	1031	3	3	1 or 2	100	1
Language Search - Keyword	Level 2 - 5.A.2.7	54	3	3	2	100	1
Date of Publication Range	Level 2 - 5.A.2.8	31	104	3	4	100	1

Getting started

No configuration is required to use the WMS Z39.50 Service.

However, any service that wishes to connect via Z39.50 will need to request an web service key (WSKey) from OCLC and agree to the terms and conditions for using this service. The key and secret will be used to authorize the client and open a connection to the service.

Each key will provide access to only one WMS institution. If a client wishes to search holdings for multiple WMS libraries, then a key must be requested and maintained for each WMS institution.

Direct your query to database Z39WMS. Regardless of your WMS data center, Z39.50 queries should be directed to:

• Host: unified.z39.50-m1.prod.oclc.org
• Port: 210