The executive office of the American Library Association charged with helping to secure information technology policies that support efforts of libraries to ensure access to electronic resources as a means of upholding the right of the American public to a free and open society. Office for Information Technology Policy (OITP) The list is also available online in searchable format, updated weekly at: See also: OCLC holding library code. OCLC publishes two alphabetically arranged print directories under the title OCLC Participating Institutions, one arranged by OCLC symbol and the other by name of institution. Symbols of interlibrary loan suppliers are displayed in uppercase, those of nonsuppliers in lowercase. OCLC symbols are used in bibliographic records to indicate cataloging source ( MARC field 040) and in holdings displays in the OCLC WorldCat database to identify libraries that have used a record for cataloging purposes.
Members with more than one library may have a different symbol for each library.
OCLC symbols consisted of three characters until 2001 when five-character symbols began to be assigned to new institutions.
A unique code assigned by OCLC to identify a library or other institution that is a member of or participant in its cataloging, interlibrary loan, or reference systems ( example: DLC for Library of Congress).