Libraries face many challenges in making electronic resources accessible and discoverable. In particular, the exponentially increasing number of licensed and open access electronic resources and the dynamic nature of consortial collections (platform changes, title transference between packages, and package overlap) present challenges for cataloging and discovery. From March 21 to April 10, 2017, the authors performed a selected review of library literature and conducted a survey of library consortia worldwide to ascertain the cataloging models, strategies, and advanced technological tools used to ensure discovery of consortial collections. The findings from the literature review and survey are summarized in this article.

Time wasted is time lost. What better way to make use of a document cataloger’s time than to automate the searching processin OCLC? This is what we are doing at the University of California (UC) San Diego. The key component of this strategy is the up: search command in OCLC. This command only became available to OCLC Connexion users in April 2008 and has remained largely undiscovered.

In January 2000, the University of California created the Shared Cataloging Program (SCP). Based at the University of California, San Diego, the SCP is a “centralized cataloging model” for the California Digital Library consortium collections. This article will take an evolutionary look at the perpetual challenges of sustaining a consortial cataloging model and highlight the efforts of the SCP in the ongoing quest to eliminate the redundancy of efforts by centralizing the optimization of cataloging efficiency.