If you participate in the OCLC Community Center, you’ll know it’s recently had a major upgrade. We’re happy with the results and excited about the possibilities ahead. But getting to this point wasn’t easy. It’s been a long road. And like many large-scale tech projects, the takeaways go well beyond the new software.

Every twist and turn offered lessons about how to better create valuable content and meaningful connections with our users. The truth is, we learned a lot more than ever expected about building community. And we’re hoping our experience can provide insights that inspire and inform your work to connect and engage with the communities you serve.

Pay attention to negative and positive feedback

First up is the critical role of feedback. We took a deep dive into years’ worth of community ideas, comments, reviews, and member surveys as part of the update. And when you look at it all, it’s both positive and negative.

It’s tempting to focus on negative feedback. When we put ourselves in the community’s shoes and reframed negative comments as problems to solve, we of course wanted to fix the squeaky wheels. At the same time, we made sure to balance the negative against positive responses. This helped us shine a light on the things our users already value.

“The new modernized community center site has huge improvements. I can easily find what I want and really enjoy browsing different topics, and always can find new stuff. All the contents are well organized. It allows me to easily manage my subscriptions and get notifications in time.”

— Grace Ye, Pepperdine Unviersity

Really understanding what the community values is essential to make sure any changes are better, not just different. We found that creating a culture that welcomes both positive and negative feedback has helped foster open communications and a friendly, helpful tone.

Tie changes back to community needs

Our second big lesson was about responsiveness. Receiving feedback is part of the equation, but acting on it is what matters most. That involves asking clarifying questions, prioritizing improvements, and closing the loop so that the solutions proposed actually meet the identified needs.

“I appreciate that the Center has been streamlined, so that events, recordings, and ideas (enhancements) are grouped under their own menu headings. Being able to search across the entire site versus just within a product community is a big time saver.”

— Laura Vogler, Wabash College

You can see below how some of the new features address specific requests and concerns of the community:

• More options for users to customize subscriptions and subscribe to new content. This includes ideas (formerly enhancement suggestions) and events so the community hears as soon as new content is added and updates are shared.
• Digest subscription options are available to minimize the number of notifications daily or weekly.
• New features in the ideas space allow greater community input, allowing users to show support more easily via “Kudos.”
• Discussion threads allow for refinement of ideas.
• Improved search capabilities help users filter results to specific content types based on their needs.

Some of the reasons we moved to a new system were, of course, technical. But all decisions were made, across the board, based on what our community told us they wanted now and in the future. One of our main goals was to meet current needs and make future improvements and evolution easier.

Park it, don’t forget it

Sometimes, when a comment or idea comes in, your first thought will be that it’s impossible with the current system. That may be true. But don’t scrap the idea. Put it safely in a parking lot that you can revisit later.

“Shaping the direction of development via direct interaction with the product teams is invaluable.”

— Tamsin Rothery, Oxford Brookes University

The OCLC Community Center has been around for almost nine years. And we keep all the comments—hundreds of thoughts that couldn’t be immediately incorporated, resolved, or fully evaluated when we received them. Conversations at conference lunches, input from virtual meetings, and feedback given in webinar polls were the foundation for improvements. When we started this project, it was the first place we looked.

We already had so much invaluable feedback, ready and waiting to inform and enrich our planning. This “no comment left behind” mindset changed the trajectory of the project. If you don’t have a process in place to organize and store this data, we highly recommend it. And yes, it might be a month or a year until you go back to the parking lot, but changes may not have the same impact without it.

Gratitude must resonate with the recipient

The Community Center is, at its heart, a group of people—library staff and our experts—dedicated to improving our products and services, often by helping each other find solutions to new challenges. This includes critique. But that’s the point. So, when it comes to suggesting new features and reporting on issues, it’s out there for everyone to see and baked into the process of how we source ideas for improvements.

My favorite thing in the new Community Center is the option to receive notifications when others kudo or comment on my ideas.”

— Sherri Langton, Northwestern College

And this is why we recognize top contributors in the Community Center—to thank them for their contributions, feedback, and critiques. We know this public recognition is meaningful for many. But we also know not everyone wants to be recognized this way. At a recent webinar I attended, the speaker noted, “Not all gratitude given is gratitude heard.” This resonates with our approach to recognition. When building relationships within your community, learn the ways members want to be recognized and develop multiple ways of thanking them.

So, as we head into 2024, I’d like to especially thank the following people for their commitment. These are our community top contributors, the folks who ask and answer the tough questions, volunteer and give their time on leadership teams and present their projects, and who give us the feedback that makes the Community Center, our products, and OCLC better.

• Janelle Bitter, Raritan Valley Community College
• Richard Broekman, Tilburg University
• Alli Carroll, University of East Anglia
• Sherri Langton, Northwestern College
• Candace Lebel, The Claremont Colleges
• Alli Martel, Springfield College
• Brandon Martin, Northeastern State University
• Emily Mineart, Luther College
• Tamsin Rothery, Oxford Brookes University
• Laura Vogler, Wabash College
• Thomas Waters, Brenau University
• Grace Ye, Pepperdine Unviersity

There are, of course, hundreds of people at our member libraries and OCLC staff who work to make the Community Center a success. And we thank them, too. This major update was so much more than a fresh coat of paint. It was a transformative experience. It reminded us of what it takes to build and grow a thriving community. If you’re part of an institution that’s an OCLC member and you haven’t joined the Community Center areas for the products and services you use, I hope you’ll do so. We want to support your success and we need your voice and experience to help other libraries.

---

If you have questions about the OCLC Community Center, take a look at this overview. To sign in, please start here.