Posts in topic: membership

Lessons on building community while building the new OCLC Community Center

Next blog banner for post on OCLC community center update. Six icons representing features of the community center are shown.

If you participate in the OCLC Community Center, you’ll know it’s recently had a major upgrade. We’re happy with the results and excited about the possibilities ahead. But getting to this point wasn’t easy. It’s been a long road. And like many large-scale tech projects, the takeaways go well beyond the new software.

Every twist and turn offered lessons about how to better create valuable content and meaningful connections with our users. The truth is, we learned a lot more than ever expected about building community. And we’re hoping our experience can provide insights that inspire and inform your work to connect and engage with the communities you serve.

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Redefining the library experience: Global insights for future planning

Libraries are no stranger to change. As community expectations shift, so do our libraries. This adaptability was on full display during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. But as that pressure has subsided, we’re seeing widespread reflection around what libraries will look like in the future. Many library leaders are thinking about fundamental transformations, with the goal of creating a more impactful library experience for their users.

During the past year, OCLC Global Council and OCLC Research explored the idea of the changing library experience by focusing on topics such as community engagement, collaboration, and innovative programs that meet library users’ evolving needs and expectations. Planning for this work was informed by efforts associated with our New Model Library: Pandemic Effects and Library Directions research. And it was accomplished through online thought leadership webinars and a global survey that spanned all library sizes and types. What we learned is that libraries will continue to be necessary infrastructure for supporting local communities. And to deliver impact, there’s increasing need for partnership and library staff support.

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Are you redefining the library experience?

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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.

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Open ecosystems: The heartbeat of modern librarianship

This year’s OCLC Global Council area of focus is “Libraries and Open Ecosystems.” Through this lens, we are hosting leadership discussions on topics that are important to libraries, including the New Model Library, open research, and metadata challenges. We are also exploring what it means “to be open”—which, I believe, is the essence of what all modern libraries are striving for.

As a member of Global Council, I find great value in discussing subjects like this with colleagues from libraries of all types all over the world. Through the topic “open ecosystems” we are united by a common mindset and shared interests. While, at the same time, we realize that our institutions can be as unique and diverse as the communities we serve. How we work together on core issues while respecting local and diverse needs is both a great challenge and a wonderful opportunity.

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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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Lessons learned from the OCLC Community Center during the pandemic

When I wrote about the OCLC Community Center’s fifth anniversary last year, I thought we were all getting a handle on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. We knew things weren’t over yet, but we also weren’t expecting to spend the next 12 months working from home, socially distancing, wearing masks in public, missing lunches and meetings and conferences, and so much more. While nothing replaces those in-person interactions, I’ve been amazed at how virtual engagement and connections have grown and deepened. As a result, we’ve all learned many valuable lessons about creating online community that will have lasting impact.

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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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Racial and social justice: A blueprint for constructive conversations

Issues of racial and social justice impact all facets of our communities, and therefore, all our libraries. As we continue to look for ways to increase racial and cultural equity, we are buoyed by our activist efforts to support privacy, equitable access, and intellectual freedom, and sobered by the realization that our histories and the ground upon which they have been built have not always demonstrated support of equity, diversity, and inclusion. It is critical that global libraries engage in ongoing discussions to surface concerns, share insights, and help lead our community efforts.

During a recent OCLC Global Council roundtable, we used a structured discussion format to share perspectives and gather insights around current environments, library reactions, and what our responsibilities as libraries should be going forward. We didn’t come up with all the answers, but the discussion was rich and informative.

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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.

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Global library discovery and fulfillment: How we’re the same and how we differ

When we presented last year’s Global Council report on access to open content, we got a lot of great feedback. Both from Council delegates—who reported that it exceeded their expectations—and from our membership and the library community in general. The report provided insights on an important topic that hadn’t been explored in that way before: to gain a collective global understanding of the activities, investments, and efforts libraries are engaged with around open content. This report is just one of the ways that Global Council works on behalf of libraries by gathering insights each year to help inform the profession and OCLC on topics of importance to the library profession.

This year Global Council sponsored a survey to gather “Global Perspectives on Discovery and Fulfillment,” with a goal of gathering enough information from each of our three geographic regions to be able to make statistically significant comparisons if and when possible. I’m pleased to share that we hit that mark and can report back on a few interesting differences.

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