Gentry Holbert, Associate Professor Librarian and Director of Library & Information Resource Services at the Marnie and John Burke Memorial Library at Spring Hill College, shares her library’s decision to adopt OCLC WorldShare Management Services. Spring Hill College is located in Mobile, Alabama, and has a student population of just under 1,400.
In my role as library director, I oversee our IT help desk, as well as our course management system, Moodle. We have five librarians (including me), two of whom work in public services. We have a head of technical services and an emerging technologies librarian, who handles a lot of our database issues, our Web page and our social media networking. We also have one staff person each for serials and acquisitions.
When I arrived at Spring Hill College in 2008, we began exploring catalog options. It was a very intentional, reflective process. Changing your library’s catalog is a huge decision to make. And due to our staff size, whenever we make any major decision, we really have to consider our resources and budget.
Marnie and John Burke Memorial Library, Spring Hill College
The decision
In October 2010, we participated in an OCLC webinar on Webscale Management Services. Several things led us to go with OCLC Webscale Management Services, which was recently renamed to OCLC WorldShare Management Services. First, OCLC is a trusted, known cooperative in the library world—and has been for more than four decades. We were already doing our cataloging and ILL with OCLC, so they already had much of our data. And, OCLC is stable—not some constantly changing, becoming-something-else type of organization. This is what they do—and what they have done.
In December 2010, we made our final decision. I literally went around the room with my librarians and polled my team like a jury: “Are you in?” They were all on board. When we agreed to be an early adopter, we knew that things would be evolving as we went through the process. We would also be able to provide information to OCLC. It was exciting because we were contributing to the development of this solution. It was like being part owners, along with the other early adopters.
Building OCLC WorldShare from the bottom up
Among my staff’s early fears was data migration. How will we get our data into this new system, or what if we don’t have a catalog? You’ll never have everything in a database completely correct. This is counter to our natural instincts to clean up everything before we sent it to OCLC. We did a little bit of that, but realized we couldn’t let the little imperfections slow us down or we would get stuck and have no movement. We had the opportunity to help build WorldShare from the bottom up, which far outweighed these fears and imperfections in our data. We were helping to build this solution the way it should be done. And for our library, taking our time to set new policies—such as collection development policies—gave us the chance to do this and to do it right.
Up and running
By June 2011, we were up and running on the user side. We tested and tweaked everything over the summer to get ready for our students’ return in the fall. We used this time to put new policies in place and mapped out our workflows as a group. Even though we knew the workflows would change—especially with acquisitions—and even if the changes were for the best, they were still changes. It’s important to keep in mind that everyone processes change differently. I would encourage those considering a move to WorldShare to review some change management materials as part of their preparation.
It was helpful for some of my staff to talk through various scenarios—“We used to do it this way and our old system was set up this way”—as they created new policies and made decisions in this new world. It was also an important process because we wanted everyone to be happy with the final result. How they were redefining their roles and implementing WorldShare would impact how they performed their work.
The migration went well. We’re still refining some of our acquisition development policies, and we have conducted some minor data clean-up. But what we were anxious about turned out not to be a big deal at all. We knew that some special collections items had not been original catalog items in WorldCat, and they turned out a little funny, but they were fairly simple to correct.
Introducing WorldShare to the faculty and students
The week before school started, we introduced WorldShare to our faculty. I thought we would focus on the basics—how to log in, how to set up their accounts—but they jumped right in. We received very positive feedback, even from those who aren’t super tech-savvy. I showed them how to make lists—and they immediately incorporated that as part of their course work, and have linked their students to specific readings. When I explained the user feedback feature, they responded, “Ah, I’m going to make my students do that as part of class discussion, where we all contribute feedback about this certain article, or about this book.” Even those who didn’t attend our session sent me e-mails about how great WorldShare was: “I love this.” “This is fantastic.”
I thought we’d be the only ones excited about our new catalog. Everyone on campus was excited. Members of our faculty have made a point to tell our provost how great WorldShare is. And, WorldShare has helped us better achieve our goal of having a more integral role in the teaching process, and linking faculty and students to the resources they need to achieve their learning objectives.
Outcomes and statistics
The school is currently focused on assessments right now because we have a pre-, five-year review with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools for accreditation coming up. The statistics and information we’ll be able to pull out of WorldShare will help us with our preparation. This information is not just about books, but also other materials such as e-books, and involves looking at assignments and tracking how students are using the materials after an assignment. These statistics also help us evaluate the effectiveness of our information literacy initiatives, which indicate the impact the library has on student retention. Now, we will be able to present statistical data to our administration that supports how our library positively impacts retention. We have data that communicates our value and demonstrates how we help enhance and enrich our students’ learning experience.
Because our workflows are more streamlined, we have focused more of our attention on our users, as opposed to background tasks that aren’t visible—and aren’t adding tangible value from our students’ perspective. In the spring we will conduct a survey that will help us gauge our overall success over the past year. I am confident that the results will further validate our decision to choose OCLC WorldShare Management Services.
Enjoy this story? Subscribe to OCLC Cooperative eNews.
Have a story to share with members of the cooperative? Send us an e-mail.
View past issues of OCLC Cooperative eNews.
Librarians' Toolbox:
