Posts tagged under: Collective Collection

More than maintenance: Four reasons to update holdings

Banner image for OCLC Next blog post: More than maintenance: Four reasons to update holdings. Image shows many different household and workshop tools that might often be used in maintenance

We do lots of maintenance tasks in our daily lives. We change tires, clean the HVAC, and inspect our roof and gutters—the list goes on and on. Usually, we do these things to prevent bad things from happening. But have you ever stopped and considered the benefits?

Holdings maintenance—making sure your library’s WorldCat holdings are accurate and up to date—is a good example of how important maintenance is. But there’s still so much more at play. In fact, there are major benefits for your library, your users, and the wider library community.

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Local decision support based on collective intelligence

Local decision support based on collective intelligence

Is there anything more thrilling than finding unexpected, useful answers during an information treasure hunt? While working on a shared print program years ago, I got the chance to use a variety of data sets and programming skills to uncover hidden strengths within library collections. It was important work. That knowledge helped showcase how each library contributed and revealed new ways to leverage collective materials.

The ability to use analytics tools to investigate relationships between the collections of many libraries and come away with actionable, local insights was exhilarating. If that sounds like your kind of treasure hunt, I have good news for you.

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We persevere through challenges when we rely on each other

It’s hard to believe it’s been more than a year since the pandemic turned our lives upside down. And despite shutdowns and closures, libraries still found incredible ways to serve their communities. You adjusted to conditions and responded to critical information needs. You pivoted to deliver content and programs digitally and to support online learning.

My colleagues and I at OCLC have been proud to support you. We prioritized product investments, research, and development opportunities that helped respond to new challenges. As a member-driven organization, that’s what we do—empower libraries to meet changing needs.

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The OCLC network: Collaboration, innovation, and efficiency

OCLC provides a wide range of services and products, membership activities, and research outputs, and at the center is the OCLC network—the libraries, library workers, data, and connections that make it all possible. By providing a platform that connects libraries around the world in so many ways, this network uniquely powers collaboration, innovation, and efficiency.

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Time-traveling librarians, shared print, and being excellent to each other

There’s a scene in the movie Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure where they lament that they need some keys that were lost two days earlier. But because they have a time machine, they can just wait until later, go back in time before they’re lost, and leave them right next to where they are “now” for convenience.

It’s funny, of course. But also, kind of … smart. It shows that if you can count on someone doing something in the future, you can make current plans based on that knowledge. The trick is, each of us has to know what the other is planning.

Bill and Ted can rely on a future (and past) version of themselves to complete their plans. Library staff have to rely on shared data and common, agreed-upon signals across our collective collection.

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How your library will benefit from linked data

In January 2020, OCLC announced that the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation had awarded us a grant to build a shared entity management structure that supports libraries as we move toward new ways to create and share information about their collections. These new methods—commonly referred to as “linked data”—represent changes to both underlying library data and the type of activities that library workers perform.

Even more importantly, they also signal a shift in how the library community can work together to build on each other’s work. I believe that no matter what type of library you are associated with, you and your users will benefit from this project.

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