Compelling stories are engaging, thought-provoking and informative. And they often inspire us to take action.

Our latest round of member stories shows the excitement—and the rewards—of moving library services to the cloud. Working together using a shared platform streamlines routine, repetitive workflows and frees up time for high-impact efforts that demonstrate relevance, which is more important than ever as we keep pace with users’ expectations.

If you have a story about your library you’d like to share, please drop us a line at next@oclc.org.

Share resources with fewer clicks: University of Saint Francis, Fort Wayne, Indiana, USA

Today’s students expect to get documents and articles for their research projects quickly and easily. At the University of Saint Francis, the staff was eager to move to the cloud where upgrades are seamless and workflows are simplified. Now, staff and student workers fulfill requests with fewer steps from wherever it’s convenient to work. And loans from students that request something owned in their collection automatically go to document delivery, a dramatic improvement in productivity and customer service.

Improve discovery of your entire collection: Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan, USA

Hillsdale College had a long-term goal of making its electronic holdings as discoverable and accessible as its print collection. Today, reference librarians and students easily find the library’s open-access and licensed e-collections right in the library’s catalog thanks to high-quality records with reliable metadata and subject headings for their electronic packages. These records are loaded and updated automatically, saving the library time and money and drastically improving discovery for reference librarians and library users—they are finding things they never would have found before.

Dedicate more time to sharing research globally: Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Liverpool, UK

Staff at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine decided that they wanted to take a new direction by becoming a Higher Education Institution, which had a direct impact on their library. Library leadership decided to pursue a move to the cloud, allowing staff to focus on realizing the best student experience rather than only improving back-office workflows. That decision helped the library build deeper relationships with students and enhance research support activities for faculty.

Focus your time on your library strengths: College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University, St. Joseph and Collegeville, Minnesota, USA

The College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University Libraries wanted to be more responsive to student and faculty needs, both in the library and in the classroom. Once the staff streamlined their collection management workflows by moving to the cloud, they had more time to spend bringing library services to users. Now their technology and content expertise supports learning and teaching in classrooms all over the campus, and they are collaborating with faculty through personalized research services and consultation.

Deliver library resources from around the world as if it’s easy: Seaside Public Library, Seaside, Oregon, USA

The Seaside Public Library has an impressive 68% interlibrary loan fill rate and an average 20-hour turnaround time. How? Partly it’s an attitude—making the “detective work” of finding the right materials fun. And partly it’s innovative ideas like keeping track of which book in a series a patron has requested and requesting the next one so that it arrives as they finish the previous one.

Support changing roles with reduced workloads: Tulsa Community College, Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA

When Tulsa Community College migrated to a cloud-based library management system, staff members found that they were able to eliminate many routine tasks and perform new roles due to their more efficient workflows. Now, they finish their regular work more quickly and can take on new projects, like building a digital archive for the college and creating custom usage reports of library resources.

Tell the community your story

What’s your story? Every library has one. Share it to advance our profession, and watch how it influences and drives other libraries toward new achievements and success.