Posts tagged under: Library Management

From data to action: Leveraging insights to make more informed collection decisions

“How many books are there on Islamic law?”

This was the deceptively simple question posed by a colleague while brainstorming the potential scope of a digitization project on Islamic legal history. For non-librarians, it might seem like something one could just “look up.” But as you and I know, that kind of analysis only begins with a simple question and branches out into many more complex issues of data analysis, accounting for duplicate titles, different editions, and multiple languages, etc.

But I decided to give it a go and survey a selected number of libraries in North America using the tool Choreo Insights. I published the in-depth results of my findings in another post on the Islamic Law Blog, but today wanted to talk more about the process.

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OCLC’s role in advancing library linked data

There are times when a single organization’s decision to embrace a particular technology will have an outsized influence on everyone else in that sector. For example, with the release of “Toy Story” in 1995—the first feature-length film entirely created with CGI—Pixar set a new standard for animated movies. While CGI had been used before, the success of Pixar’s approach encouraged other studios to adopt the technology more quickly and fully.

We are at a moment like this today. The shifting of operational workflows to incorporate linked data will transform how libraries create, manage, and improve WorldCat, the largest source of library metadata in the world. OCLC’s strategy to champion this change, along with the support of its thousands of members, represents a significant event for the library profession worldwide.

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How linked data can help libraries make more of an impact online

Graphic banner for linked data blog post showing WorldCat Entities linked data text on a futuristic background

In a recent post, I introduced the topic of linked data for libraries and OCLC’s plans for moving forward. Today, let’s dig into the details on how linked data amplifies the knowledge in library collections and the tools we can use to make it happen.

This shift toward linked data isn’t just a technology upgrade, but a long-term strategy for enhancing the findability and accessibility of the important materials that libraries curate and manage. It’s a technical challenge, yes. But I also believe it’s a chance to better promote our values.

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Connecting with libraries, reaffirming our mission

Earlier this month, Columbus wasn’t just the capital of Ohio, but a center of knowledge and literacy as it welcomed public library professionals to the Public Library Association 2024 Conference. Hosting this conference was a testament to Columbus’s status as a hub of technical and educational engagement, and to the important role that public library professionals play in our country’s intellectual and civic lives. That focus continued with National Library Week 2024. This year’s theme, “Ready, Set, Library!” was such a great way to think about libraries—not only as places where learning, growth, and education happen, but as active, engaged partners in so many ways.

OCLC staff were very much involved at PLA and during National Library week. So now that things have calmed down a bit, I want to take a moment to reflect on what libraries mean to me.

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Engage faculty and students with digital collections

There are almost as many reasons for digitizing library collections as there are collections themselves. Public libraries may do so to curate and promote unique local history or culture. Museums, of course, want to make their treasures available for study and enjoyment to people who can’t visit the physical building. And while academic libraries have just as many, varied reasons for beginning a specific digitization project, there’s often a longer-term goal in mind: to promote study and learning around the collection.

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An introduction to library linked data

We recently announced a comprehensive strategy to bring linked data into mainstream library cataloging workflows. It’s a long-term approach, recognizing that most libraries will move to linked data slowly and incrementally—and we’re committed to providing tools and resources to support the transition for everyone.

Working closely with libraries around the world, we know that staff at some libraries are already educating themselves on the topic, piloting linked data services, and taking part in ongoing research. But we also know that many others have a lot of questions. In addition to technical issues, librarians are also wondering how linked data will impact and affect the work they are currently doing. To help, OCLC is rolling out linked data infrastructure and services that meet libraries where they are today and provide meaningful improvement to challenges facing libraries.

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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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Three lessons for launching successful multilingual programs at your library

The Center for Immigration Studies estimates that 67.3 million Americans speak a language other than English at home, a number that has more than doubled since 1990. That’s a huge number with powerful implications for social institutions, including libraries. For many of us, getting started serving those communities feels like an overwhelming task. I’m here to tell you—you can do it. And you can start today to make a significant difference for your community with multilingual programming.

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Five data analytics questions to help secure—or increase—your e-resource budget

5 questions

By Justin Parker, Subscriptions Manager, University of Manchester Library, and
Tim O’Neill, Electronic Resources Coordinator, University of Manchester Library

As Subscriptions Manager and Electronic Resources Coordinator at the University of Manchester, part of our jobs is to make sure the university gets the best deal on its e-resource investment. But what does “best deal” really mean? Does it mean the least expensive materials? Well, an inexpensive subscription isn’t a good deal if it isn’t used at all. And even free, open source content has a cost associated with the cataloging, discovery, and course management systems we use to make it available.

The challenge is to find better ways to assess the value our students, teachers, and researchers gain from the e-resources we provide. And the end result should be a better plan for accurately conveying the importance of library collections within the larger goals of the institution. But how do you get there? Having spent some time recently tracing the pathways of e-resource usage, we have a few suggestions.

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How a network of data curators can unlock the tremendous reuse value of research data

data_reuse

Data reuse is a major focus for institutional research groups and their funders and it’s easy to see why. After the (often) expensive process of collecting, analyzing, and mining research data for valuable new knowledge, any additional attention, such as the publication, reference, or reuse of that data, multiplies its value.

But understanding researchers’ behaviors and needs when it comes to data sharing and reuse is challenging. Each discipline has unique norms and practices for how they collect and manage data, when (and if) they share their data, and how they determine a dataset’s fitness for reuse. Data curators—as information science practitioners—make a wealth of decisions and take well-informed actions to ensure that selected data have meaningful and enduring value to future research.

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