In 1967, before most even knew what a computer was or how it might positively affect our lives, its team based in Dublin, Ohio was making great progress in the electronic management of bibliographic information. In August of 1971, the cooperative helped the Alden Library at Ohio University launch the first online catalog of any library in the world. OCLC continued to be a pioneer in many of the moves to digitize and interconnect library catalog data, all the while improving the services and making libraries more efficient. It also began to generate significant surpluses, with which it continued to expand the services it could provide to the library community and serve a worldwide network.

What was once a regional network of libraries has today become a massive institution serving a global community of more than 30,000 libraries, while also becoming one of the leading employers in the state of Ohio.

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