What’s newat OCLC Research

No single library can hold every item its users may need, so resource sharing networks are essential to expanding access to materials. OCLC Research’s SHARES working group has developed several free tools to help support best practices in resource sharing.

Interlibrary Loan Best Practices

The proposed Principles and Protocols for Sharing Special Collections through Interlibrary Loan aims to support lending policies that promote access, enrich research, and foster a collaborative environment between lending partner libraries. These resource sharing tools were developed by member institutions of SHARES, an international resource sharing consortium within the OCLC Research Library Partnership program that collaborates to share knowledge, expertise, and ideas as well as materials.

The Operationalizing the Art Research Collective Collection project investigated challenges faced by art research collections by exploring opportunities for collaboration between art, academic, and independent research libraries. The project was designed to identify new possibilities for collaboration and partnership models that support sustainable, ongoing availability of rich collections of art libraries to researchers, wherever they may be.

The project outcomes are shared in two reports:

• Sustaining Art Research Collections: Using Data to Explore Collaboration—Models how quantitative analysis of library collection and activity data can be leveraged by library leaders to inform decisions about collaboration opportunities supporting art research collections.
• Sustaining Art Research Collections: Case Studies in Collaboration—Shares recommendations for building successful collaborations and identifies typical challenges library partnerships navigate based on case study research of current library collaborations. 

• Transitioning to the Next Generation of Metadata: Traces how metadata is evolving and considers the impact this transition may have on library services.
• Transforming Metadata into Linked Data: Shares project findings where OCLC and five partner institutions investigated methods for—and the feasibility of—transforming metadata into linked data to improve the discoverability and management of digitized cultural materials using CONTENTdm.
• Reimagine Descriptive Workflows: Contextualizes the challenges facing the library and information field in inclusive and reparative metadata work and offers a framework of guidance that can help frame institutions’ local priorities and areas for change.

Archive, library, and museum staff face similar challenges when it comes to responding to a crisis, de-escalating conflict, and addressing burnout. Four new on-demand courses provide staff in cultural heritage institutions with information and tools to learn about how to prepare for and handle these situations. 

These courses respond to training needs and increased demands identified by the field, including pressures from a fast-changing environment, potential and experienced conflict, constraints to resources, and challenges in the workplace such as burnout. Each course includes perspectives and real-life approaches from people who have actively worked through similar challenges.

Our Project Partners

• Institute of Museum and Library Services
• Battelle

Working in consultation with Shift Collective, OCLC hosted a conversation among community stakeholders who discussed how to address the systemic issues of bias and inequity within our current collection description infrastructure. The input from the convening, shaped by substantive input from advisory group leaders was published in the report Reimagine Descriptive Workflows: A Community-informed Agenda for Reparative and Inclusive Descriptive Practice that provides two action pathways:

• A guiding framework for making necessary, fundamental shifts both in organizational culture and individual mindset to enact transformative and sustainable change in the descriptive process.
• Recommendations for operational changes that organizations can make to reimagine descriptive practices in their local and global contexts.

About the support kit

• It was tested by staff in 15 public libraries and enhanced with their feedback.
• Includes pragmatic strategies, tools, and resources for library staff.
• Helps libraries assess their strengths and capacity, identify key partners, and plan and implement programming and services that support local needs.

Our Project Funder

• The Institute of Museum and Library Services

OCLC's WebJunction partnered with Washington State University’s (WSU) Center for Digital Scholarship and Curation to create a series of free online digital stewardship courses to meet the needs of staff at small tribal and public libraries, archives, and museums.

Creating, managing, preserving, and sharing digital collections can be daunting for staff at small and rural cultural institutions. This undertaking is resource-intensive, requiring technology, significant staff time, new skills, and an ongoing commitment to maintain them. Understanding the full lifecycle of digital stewardship is critical to successful digital collections, but these institutions often face barriers in accessing adequate training and resources.

The courses guide learners through the lifecycle of digital stewardship, while creating an action plan for their library to accomplish the entire range of tasks and activities necessary to successfully create and share digital collections. The full seven-course series is now available.

Research information management (RIM) is a rapidly growing area of investment in US research universities. While RIM practices are mature in Europe—with a community of practice led by euroCRIS—and other locales in support of nationalized reporting requirements, RIM practices at US research universities have taken a different—and characteristically decentralized—course. A complex environment characterized by multiple use cases, stakeholders, and systems has resulted.

To give context for institutional leaders to examine their local practices, the Research Information Management in the United States project published a two-part report that presents a thorough examination of RIM practices, goals, stakeholders, and system components at US research universities.

Part 1—Findings and Recommendations offers a summary of six discrete RIM use cases and proposes a RIM system framework and recommendations for RIM stakeholders. Part 2—Case Studies offers an in-depth narrative of the RIM practices at five US research institutions.

For up-to-date information, this ongoing series from the OCLC Research blog, Hanging Together, covers Research Information Management in the United States reports.

OCLC published five reports on its research findings:

• Summary of Research—Synthesizes findings from across all research activities on the NAFAN project
• Pop-up Survey—Summarizes results from a national survey of online archive users on their search behavior, information needs, and demographic characteristics
• User Interviews—Details findings from interviews with archival aggregation end users on their information needs and information-seeking behavior
• Focus Group Interviews—Shares outcomes from discussions with archivists about their needs for describing collections and contributing description to an archival aggregation
• EAD Analysis—Analyzes EAD data as raw material for building a finding aid aggregation by looking for common data structures present and identifying gaps that could impede user discovery

Libraries have a rich history of working together to meet mutual needs. Current advances in digital and network technologies have amplified the benefits and lowered the costs of cross-institutional collaboration, making it an inviting choice for academic libraries seeking to acquire new services, expertise, and infrastructure. As interest in library collaboration grows, it becomes more important for academic libraries to be purposeful and strategic in their use of this sourcing option.

These two thematically linked reports explore library collaboration from both theoretical and practical perspectives, and   will be of special interest to senior academic library leadership, library consortia/group leadership, and academic library staff responsible for managing collaborative relationships.

Library Collaboration as a Strategic Choice: Evaluating Options for Acquiring Capacity explores collaboration as a key sourcing strategy for academic libraries in acquiring needed capacity and contextualizes it as one sourcing approach among a range of options available to libraries.

Building Research Data Management Capacity: Case Studies in Strategic Library Collaboration provides actionable recommendations based on real-world case studies that libraries can apply to make their own collaborations successful and sustainable. The report shares experiences from the Texas Data Repository, Portage Network, and Data Curation Network to illuminate the challenges, opportunities, and considerations of building RDM service capacity through collaboration.

Each year, OCLC Global Council selects an area of focus to engage in meaningful conversations with the library community around shared challenges facing libraries around the world. This important work spans not only geographic regions, but all types of libraries, and provides opportunities for professionals at all levels of their career to participate by adding their voice and ideas to the conversation.

The 2022 area of focus offers a four-part recorded webinar series on “Libraries and Open Ecosystems.” In this series, OCLC Global Council and OCLC Research explore the broader impact of the library in its local ecosystem, that is, the library’s symbiotic relationship with the social, educational, informational, and environmental infrastructure of the community where it is located.

On-demand webinars from this series include:

• Creating a New Model Library
  This session focuses on changes made both before and during the pandemic that influenced leaders’ visions for their libraries during the next five years, including library participation in open ecosystems.
• Libraries and Open Ecosystems: Metadata challenges and opportunities in the open ecosystem
  Speakers discuss the next generation of metadata, including contributing environmental factors, and the findings of the Reimagine Descriptive Workflows project.

• Libraries and Open Ecosystems: The library’s role in open research
  OCLC Research staff and library leaders from OCLC’s Global Council discuss the library’s role in open research.
• Libraries and Open Ecosystems: Creating a New Model Library
  OCLC Research staff and library leaders from OCLC’s Global Council for a discussion on emerging library models.

This high-level briefing synthesizes findings and recommendations within the context of work experiences, collections experiences, and engagement experiences. And within each of these contexts, it identifies New Model Library transformations occurring through four areas of impact:

• Agility—Taking quick and innovative action in response to changing circumstances and expectations
• Collaboration—Working with stakeholders to lead change within libraries, institutions, and communities
• Virtualization—Expanding online library experiences for staff and the community
• Space—Finding new ways to engage within the physical library