Posts tagged under: Strategy

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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Benefits of prioritizing proactivity

banner for OCLC Next blog post on prioritizing proactivity, duotone images of check-lists

The difference between being proactive and reactive has been swirling for me recently. It can feel empowering to be able to get ahead of something instead of having to respond in the moment. By prioritizing proactive measures—including training—we can create a more stable and sustainable future for our organizations and the communities we serve. And hopefully, minimize stress for ourselves, our staff, and our stakeholders.

Helping library workers do just that was part of the motivation for our recent update to the REALM project, an effort funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services and led by OCLC.

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How resource sharing and collections data can inform collaboration

By its very nature, resource sharing between libraries is a form of collaboration. Most libraries have agreements and processes in place that enable them to fill collection gaps and provide for users’ needs through resource sharing partners. But is there value in pursuing a more deliberate, data-driven strategy when building your resource sharing groups? Might such a strategy reveal unexpected partnering opportunities?

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Investing in a long-term future for libraries

Investing in a long-term future for libraries

Evaluating progress is complicated when the pace of change is accelerating. Move too quickly? Your choice may be made obsolete by tomorrow’s changes. Move too slowly? You can be overtaken and find your relevance diminished. So, how do we tell if we’re on the right path?

At OCLC, we measure where we are and where we’re going against this question: Are we helping libraries better connect the people they serve to the resources they need?

This approach holds when we assess annual accomplishments, set new goals, and make plans for much further down the road.

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Controlled digital lending: Past successes can guide our future

When the COVID-19 pandemic created barriers to traditional information access, library workers reacted immediately to help make up the difference. I don’t think I’ve talked to a single person whose library didn’t put forward major, sometimes dramatic efforts to ramp up “anytime, anywhere” access to resources. And that includes forays into controlled digital lending (CDL).

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Drive social media success that connects on a personal level

How can you engage purposefully on social media with the different communities your library serves while also addressing larger, system-wide goals and policies? The concept of “social care” offers a clue. Social care differs from traditional customer care in that the purpose isn’t to address one issue, answer one question, or solve one problem. It’s also different than public relations in that it’s not about “one size fits all” for every audience. For social care, the goal is to nurture a more inclusive, longer-term dialogue.

At the Pikes Peak Library District, we’re using these principles to create local and program-specific social media personalities. All of our distinct voices closely align with the unique groups we serve and fall thoughtfully under a system-wide set of values.

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Connecting your library’s actions to global challenges: How do you stand up?

Working alongside library leaders from around the world, I’ve realized there is an interesting paradox in terms of organizational goals. While libraries around the world serve unique and diverse communities, at the core of their work, they share very similar visions and principles. Libraries similarly, are also able to adjust strategy and tactics very specifically to their users’ needs while keeping an eye on global interests. Finding ways to link these two levels—global interests and local conditions—can be very rewarding—and sometimes complicated.

For the past year, I have worked with OCLC Global Council and OCLC Research to explore such a link. In the fall of 2019, we began focusing on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to determine how libraries can use the goals as a framework to partner, both with each other and outside organizations, to better address global sustainability efforts.

Then COVID-19 struck. And libraries worldwide had an entirely new set of shared challenges to address locally.

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