News briefs

On 11 February 2011, OCLC President and CEO, Jay Jordan, provided an update on the cooperative's recent activities and ongoing initiatives that are positively impacting OCLC members throughout the Caribbean to more than 120 participants at the first OCLC Jamaican Users Meeting. This meeting was held in conjunction with the Library and Information Association of Jamaica's (LIAJA) Annual General Conference, which took place in Kingston, Jamaica, 12-13 February 2011.

Mr. Jordan's visit also included a meeting with officers of the Main Library of the University of the West Indies, and an additional meeting with members of Jamaica's Office of the Ministry of Education to discuss opportunities for collaboration among Jamaica's National Library, public and special libraries and the OCLC cooperative. Ms. Audrey V. Sewell and senior officers from the Office of the Ministry of Education participated in this discussion on improving access to information for school libraries and resource sharing opportunities.

Mr. Jordan also participated as the key note speaker in LIAJA's 61st Presidential Banquet, held to welcome incoming 2011 LIAJA president, Mrs. Pauline Nicholas. Pauline is currently Electronic Reference Librarian at the University of the West Indies. She is also a 2007 Jay Jordan IFLA/OCLC Early Career Development Fellow. You may view Pauline's presentation on Jamaican libraries, which was recorded during her 2009 visit to OCLC headquarters in Dublin, Ohio. Her presentation also includes the results of her research as a Fulbright Scholar and her activities since her participation in the Fellowship program.

To the OCLC Membership:
 
I want you to know that OCLC will again hold the line on pricing for the fiscal year commencing July 1, 2011. This will be the third consecutive year that OCLC has held prices flat.
 
This action was supported by the Board of Trustees during its meeting earlier this month. Both the Board and the management team agree that this decision reflects the values of a cooperative, acting in the best interests of its members and participants during a time of economic stress. It is equally clear that on behalf of its members OCLC must pursue its public purposes vigorously. We must continue to promote innovation and invest in developing services to control costs for libraries. In particular, as OCLC delivers Web-scale services, libraries will be able to optimize workflows and take full advantage of the technologies that the Web and cloud computing offer. The scale of the investments to launch these solutions rivals any development effort that the cooperative has undertaken in its 44 year history.
 
Investments in research and advocacy programs will also remain central to our plans. Already this year, significant studies have been released by OCLC Research, including, Cloud-sourcing Research Collections: Managing Print in the Mass-digitized Library Environment, which examines the feasibility of outsourcing management of low-use print books held in academic libraries to shared service providers. The latest OCLC membership report, Perceptions of Libraries, 2010: Context and Community, was released last month and offers new insights into information consumers and their online information seeking behaviors. OCLC’s investments in research on behalf of its members will continue in 2012 and beyond to support and advance libraries and their work.
 
Frankly, I must temper the good news by noting that in the future OCLC will not be able to absorb inflation year after year without passing through some of those costs to participating institutions. While our balance sheet and cash flows are sound, we must manage costs very strictly to maintain good financial health and advance the cooperative into the next generation.
 
OCLC members have been through many up and down economic cycles during the past four decades, but the members always have chosen to sustain the cooperative to advance OCLC’s public purpose. In that spirit, the promise of Web-scale Management Services bodes well for OCLC’s capacity long into the future to deliver information to people across the world when and where they need it. Toward that end, we will continue to do everything we can to control costs and add value. We look forward to working with you to achieve the vision set out by Fred Kilgour almost 50 years ago.
 
—Jay Jordan
OCLC President and CEO