OCLC (identifier)
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The OCLC number (also known as the OCLC Control Number or OCN) is a unique catalogue identifier assigned by the Online Computer Library Center to bibliographic records in the WorldCat union catalogue. The wiki uses OCLC numbers in book citations to allow readers to locate the cited edition via WorldCat, which aggregates the holdings of tens of thousands of libraries worldwide.
This page exists as the link target for the "OCLC" label that CS1 citation templates emit when a reference includes an oclc= parameter.
Format
OCLC numbers are simple positive integers issued sequentially. They have no fixed width, no check digit and no internal structure. They range in length from a single digit for the earliest records to ten digits or more for recently catalogued items. Examples: 534995, 950430793.
Use on the wiki
OCLC numbers are passed to {{Cite book}} via the oclc= parameter:
{{cite book |last=Dasgupta |first=Shashibhushan
|year=1962 |orig-year=First published 1946
|title=Obscure Religious Cults |edition=Second
|publisher=Firma KLM |location=Calcutta
|oclc=534995}}
The citation template renders the OCLC number as a clickable link to the WorldCat record for that edition.
When to use OCLC instead of ISBN
Pre-ISBN publications (anything from before the late 1960s) and many regional or scholarly publications from Asia and Africa have no ISBN. OCLC numbers cover this gap because WorldCat catalogues editions regardless of ISBN status. For books that have both, pass both: ISBN identifies the publication, OCLC identifies the specific catalogued edition.
For Bengali, Khmer, Thai and other non-Latin-script monographs frequently cited on the wiki, OCLC is often the only stable identifier available.