Posts in topic: workflows

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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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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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 Community Center at five years: Your “extra colleague”

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Five years ago, when we started the OCLC Community Center, if you’d told me that working online with my colleagues would become the most welcome, interpersonal, almost extroverted respite from my daily routine, I would have thought that was a very … odd statement. All of us have, I assume, wonderful colleagues in our libraries and offices. We have lunches and meetings and seminars and stand-up sessions and coffee breaks, and we have… .

Or, should I say we had.

For the last few months, since many of us have been working from home because of COVID-19, the chance to work together online virtually using tools like the OCLC Community Center has cemented a belief that I held before—that the relationships and connections we make online are just as strong and important as those we make “in real life.”

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Increase data reusability and enhance your curation investments with these three tips

data reuse

In many cases, collecting and processing original research data is incredibly costly and difficult. It can involve travel, field work, painstaking examinations, and observations. Sometimes unique, expensive equipment or one-time access to materials or events that can’t be recreated is required. But it’s worth it if the data yields new scientific insights and advances.

And if that data can be reused in other studies, it makes the return on investment (ROI) much more attractive for universities and funding bodies. Professionals in libraries, archives, and museums have a unique view into the needs of researchers. We can develop and promote new services and procedures that encourage data sharing and data reuse.

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“We are stronger when we can solve problems collaboratively.”

solve-collaboratively

As Community Program Manager for the OCLC Community Center, I have many conversations with our members that fall under a few simple categories. Most often we talk about insights and ideas that they have to increase collaboration around OCLC technology and services. But occasionally our conversations turn to talking about their organizations’ goals or their own personal goals for professional growth. Regardless of the conversation, I’ve learned that one of the most important things I can do is get out of the way and let other members lead the discussion, providing their own perspective and insight.

That final step is an important one. We’re always on the lookout for ways to create a culture of support and collaboration, which is why I’m so excited about the growth of the OCLC Online Community Center over the past year. A growth that’s measured entirely in member-to-member engagement.

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Celebrating the first 500 WMS libraries

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A decade of remarkable change

In 2006, four library system vendors dominated the integrated library system market. OCLC partnered with most and was just beginning to consider its own solution. In the intervening decade, we’ve seen a lot of consolidation and rapid innovation.

Fast-forward to 2016. The ILS is now a legacy system, “next-gen” is practically passé, and Marshall Breeding has dubbed a new breed of library management and discovery services the “Library Service Platform.” Today, OCLC’s WorldShare Management Services (WMS) is one of only two offerings in this space—a true multi-tenant, cloud-based suite of services for managing and discovering the purchased and licensed replicas relojes aaa collections of libraries. It took only five years for OCLC to attract 500 libraries to WMS, becoming a leading provider in a space that it didn’t even occupy a decade ago.

That would be a major achievement in any industry, by any company. That it was achieved by a nonprofit library cooperative is credit to the unique power behind that success—our members.

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Moving out in front

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We’re at a tipping point

I frequently get to talk to librarians from very different types and sizes of libraries. When I ask about their concerns, there is one refrain I hear consistently: “We’re being asked to do more with less.” When we dig into that sentiment a bit deeper, I usually find that:

  • MORE = More outreach, more hands-on service, more training, more embedded assets, more learning guides, more interaction, more proactive recommendations.
  • LESS = Less money, less staffing, less space, less time.

Doing new things with fewer resources requires a paradigm shift. Why? Well, doing the same things with fewer resources can sometimes be managed through quantitative measures; trimming services, sharing costs, cutting back along the margins. But if you’re being asked to change both your input (funding) and output (services), that’s essentially a recipe for an entirely new way of thinking about how your organization needs to work.

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