End of an era....

I'm sure we all remember the thrill and confusion we experienced when we first used OCLC Passport. The questions we asked, "Wait, was that suppose to be F9 or F11?!" and realizations we made, "Oh, $h!t--I just hit Enter!"

Well, those experiences will forever be with us---but Passport will not. OCLC has announced final dates for the end of a Library Era--are you ready for the change?

May 1, 2005: Passport for Cataloging retires. Users should now implement their migration strategies for moving to either the Connexion browser or client interface.

May 1, 2005: Resource Sharing, ILL Web, ILL ME, and ILLiad 6.x will also retire. Users should begin migration to WorldCat Resource Sharing (presently referred to as the FirstSearch staff view) or upgrade to OCLC ILLiad 7.0. OCLC is already seeing considerable migration from ILL Web to WorldCat Resource Sharing. If this trend continues, OCLC may decide on an earlier retirement date for ILL Web.

June 2005: Union List functionality ends. OCLC will announce more details of this change in the coming months but it is expected that Connexion will support local holdings (LDR) maintenance.

July 1, 2005: OCLC retires CatME, CJK, and Arabic. All users of these access points must migrate to the Connexion browser or client. CatME functionality will be included in client version 1.20, to be released in the fourth quarter of 2004. CJK functionality will be included in client version 1.30, to be released first quarter of 2005. Arabic will be included in client version 1.40, to be released second quarter of 2005.