Posts in topic: librarianship

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.

Read More

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.

Read More

WebJunction, an evolution in library staff learning

WebJunction 20 Year Anniversary graphic

WebJunction is, first and foremost, the learning place for libraries. But what makes it special is our approach: We’re committed to listening, collaborating, and doing our own learning, too. It shows in how we’ve evolved over the past 20 years with projects—big and small—that truly reflect the library landscape and provide new ways of learning for all levels of staff.

What started in 2003 as a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that focused on helping library staff be more effective in offering public access computing has developed to include content reflecting all aspects of library learning needs. The WebJunction team is a vibrant group within OCLC Research, and our 20-year journey has produced significant contributions with and for the library community. We make learning practical and flexible, allowing individuals to modify and customize their experience to meet local needs. This has resulted in successful learning models that are both inclusive and actionable.

Read More

Are you redefining the library experience?

Next blog header image for Global Council area of focus post

Change has been a constant for libraries around the world for many decades now. But during the past few years, the pace has clearly accelerated. How do these changes, and our responses to them, shape library experiences?

This year’s OCLC Global Council area of focus explores this important question. We’ll take a deep dive into how experiences have shifted and how library workers are purposefully redefining resources and services.

As we prepare to gather your insights related to this year’s area of focus, “Redefining the library experience,” we asked our 2022–2023 Global Council leaders to provide some personal perspectives—especially with what they, and we, can do to be more intentional about identifying and innovating around these changes. Below are some of the highlights from their discussion.

Read More

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.

Read More

Stronger together: Libraries focus on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals

As I’ve spent more time working with OCLC’s Global and Regional Councils, I’ve come to an agreeable realization that’s maybe a bit of a paradox. The wider our professional networks become, the more likely we’ll find faraway colleagues whose local solutions fit our situations. Sometimes the best answers don’t come from next door, but from across the globe.

It’s not a surprise, actually, so much as a challenge. There just aren’t a lot of mechanisms for sharing great ideas across library types and geographies. But this year, I’m pleased that we’re bringing two great platforms together—OCLC Global Council and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—to help libraries around the world promote and improve their best ideas.

Read More

The Music OCLC Users Group: You say you want an evolution

The Music OCLC Users Group (MOUG), the first and oldest of the OCLC cooperative’s user groups, has spent its 40+ year history working to improve access to music materials in libraries. Often that work has felt like an identity crisis as it sought to reconcile its cataloging-centric origins with its public services evolution. But the dedicated professionals associated with MOUG have kept at it over more than four decades because of the guiding notion that if you can make products and services function well for the complexities of music resources, they will work well for any resources.

Read More

Library staff learning surges on WebJunction amid COVID-19 closures

wj_banner

As libraries have closed their physical spaces and adapted services to remote work, we’ve seen library staff spend more time than ever on professional development and online learning. In a poll conducted during the recent OCLC virtual town hall, 81% of attendees reported that they have engaged in more professional development since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As a free resource open to all, WebJunction has long been “the learning place for libraries.” But the increase that we’ve seen in time spent learning on webjunction.org between March and April 2020 has been, put simply, extraordinary.

Read More

Always together, even when we’re apart

together_banner

Do you remember—so, so long ago, back in January—when the idea of working from home for a couple of days seemed like a nice option? An opportunity to catch up on the buried emails, check off a few paperwork “to dos” from your list, or spend some focused time on a pet project.

Now? Even though I’m starting to get used to this “new normal,” I tell you this: once it’s safe to return to work, I may live in my library for a week.

Because while we’ve been doing an amazing job of staying in touch through our web meetings, email, chat, and texts, it’s just not the same. I miss real interactions with people. I miss the social interactions that make our libraries real communities.

It’s the same people I miss so much who are making isolation not just bearable, but truly remarkable. Library colleagues are approaching this crisis with the same mix of pragmatism and optimism that I’ve encountered throughout my years as a librarian. Nowhere was this more evident than in our virtual OCLC Global Council meeting last month.

Read More

2 miles or 10,000 miles—ILL makes us one library

40th-ill-anniversary

Recently, the interlibrary loan (ILL) staff at the Loyola Notre Dame Library (LOY) tracked the locations around the world from which they borrow and lend library materials. The exercise was prompted by a student who, after being shown ILL by staff members Kate Strain and Zach Gahs-Buccheri, asked, “What’s the farthest library that you’ve gotten an item from?”

Turns out the answer was the Dalton McCaughey Library at the University of Melbourne in Australia, which is 10,038 miles from LOY in Baltimore, Maryland, US.

What a great example of how ILL makes us one big library with endless shelves. No library can possibly have on hand every item it needs. For that we rely on the resource sharing communities we build. In fact, some libraries keep things in their collections to circulate primarily via ILL rather than locally. That’s the commitment they have to sharing resources.

Read More