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About WISCAT

WISCAT Defined

WISCAT is one way Wisconsin's libraries discover and share materials through interlibrary loan. This service is a project of Resources for Libraries and Lifelong Learning (RL&LL), Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI). Funding support comes from the Institute for Museum and Library Services.

DPI through the Division for Libraries, Technology and Community Learning has facilitated resource sharing in Wisconsin for twenty years through the WISCAT project. The project encompasses two major goals:

1. To create a resource sharing tool that could be used by Wisconsin libraries of all types and sizes to locate materials for interlibrary loan.
2. To provide a cost effective method by which libraries could convert their collections to the MARC bibliographic standard for use as the basis of local automation projects.

Libraries are able to participate in the interlibrary loan system at a number of levels. They may fully participate by being both a borrower and a lender; they may choose to just request materials but have another library or agent monitor their incoming requests; or they may agree simply to lend materials to others on the system. Individual library patrons are able to monitor the status of their own requests.

The catalog also allows libraries to download individual MARC records for use in local online catalogs, or to obtain an extraction of all the records they are listed as owning. Libraries can create and send electronic interlibrary loan forms to request the items they find in the catalog from the owning libraries.

For a complete history of WISCAT, see two decades of WISCAT.