May 2004 Members Council meeting summary
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OCLC Members Council elects Bob Seal, Victoria Johnson
to Board of Trustees, and Maggie Farrell as Vice President/President-elect of Members Council
Delegates discuss innovation, risk-taking and new models of service
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OCLC
Members Council elected two delegates to the OCLC Board of Trustees,
passed a resolution to improve communication, and focused discussion
on expanding access to information through a variety of creative
solutions.
Members Council, celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, met
May 23-25 in Dublin, Ohio. It was the last of three meetings with
the 2003/2004 theme, “Innovation, Risk-Taking and New Models
of Service: Library Survival in the 21st Century.”
Bob Seal, University Librarian, Texas Christian University, and
2003/2004 OCLC Members Council President, and Victoria Johnson,
Director of Libraries, Sunnyvale (California) Public Library, were
elected by Council to the OCLC Board of Trustees. Each will serve
a six-year term on the board.
Members Council elects six of the 15 Board members.
Members Council also elected Maggie Farrell, Dean of Libraries,
University of Wyoming, as Vice President/President-Elect of Members
Council. She will join incoming President Charles E. Kratz, Dean
of Libraries and Director of Information Resources Customer Service,
Weinberg Memorial Library, University of Scranton, in leading the
Members Council in the coming year.
Much of the May meeting was devoted to discussion about how to
meet growing demands by library patrons for digital resources—and,
more specifically—how to create and manage digital repositories.
Institutional Repositories
Ann Wolpert, Director of Libraries, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, discussed “Institutional Repositories: The DSpace
Experience at MIT.” DSpace, developed jointly by MIT Libraries
and Hewlett-Packard, is the digital library system designed to capture,
store, index, preserve and redistribute the intellectual output
of a university's research faculty in digital formats. DSpace is
freely available to research institutions worldwide as an open-source
system that can be customized and extended.
Ms. Wolpert said an institutional repository is a tool that might
offer part of the solution to support a new model of scholarly communication.
She said that because of their expertise, commitment and reputation
for preservation, libraries should take a leading role in developing
institutional repositories.
“Libraries have a lot of experience in large-scale collection
management. We know how to select things and how to use them. And
who else cares? Who else cares about stewardship, about making sure
that the records of advances in scholarship and research end up
being accessible to the community of continuing researchers and
learners?” Ms. Wolpert asked. “If we don't do this, who
will?”
“It seems to me that we librarians are best equipped—by
discipline, training and reputation—to do this kind of work.”
Ms. Wolpert said that faculty and administrators are recognizing
the benefits of implementing institutional repositories. She noted
that digitally accessible information is statistically demonstrated
to be used 10 times more often than print. “So faculty have
a tremendous incentive to move their content onto the Web because
they know it is going to be read on the Web,” she said.
All libraries, regardless of type, are built on a basic value proposition
to make a contribution to the parent organizations they serve, said
Ms. Wolpert.
“I’m starting to hear from the administrations of organizations
that they are starting to understand that an institutional repository
can help the parent organization brand its intellectual content
and extend its reach,” said Ms. Wolpert. “So there are
really compelling reasons for provosts and presidents of academic
institutions to make an institutional repository a priority in terms
of making a statement about how innovative an
organization is, or the depth and breadth of its intellectual content.”
A Collaborative Repository Model
John Townsend, Executive Director, New York State Higher Education
Initiative, a collaboration between public and private academic
libraries in New York, described the potential of a Collaborative
Repository Model, something his organization hopes to build.
Quoting Clifford Lynch, Director of the Coalition for Networked
Information, Mr. Townsend noted that “not every higher education
institution will need or want to run an institutional repository
… though ultimately almost every such institution will want
to offer some institutional repository services to its community.”
Mr. Townsend said he believes that libraries can work together,
with management and policy issues in place, to add a layer of collaborative
repositories between individual institutional repositories and a
trusted archival depository.
He said some existing repositories can serve a dual role at an
institutional level and at a collaborative level so that institutions
can share technologies and costs. “By distributing content
across the technology infrastructure, I think we're in a better
position to manage it,” said Mr. Townsend.
Furthering Access to the World’s Digital Information
Liz Bishoff, Vice President, OCLC Digital Collection and Metadata
Services, provided an update on OCLC's strategy and initiatives
in “furthering access to the world’s digital information.”
Ms. Bishoff described four major components of the DCMS strategy:
to educate staff on what it takes to be active participants in digital
initiatives; to create metadata as well as digital content; to provide
broad access to digital collections; and to provide a full spectrum
of preservation activities—from traditional preservation to
reformatted digital content, as well as born-digital content.
A panel discussion on institutional repositories, moderated by
Paul Gherman, Director, Jean & Alexander Heard Library, Vanderbilt
University, followed later in the meeting.
“Implementing an institutional repository is a little like
riding a bike,” said Ms. Wolpert, who was part of the panel.
“You can theorize all you want, but you really won’t know
what it’s like until you get on the bike and ride. We hope
we’re inspiring libraries to ‘just do it.’”
OCLC President’s Report
Jay
Jordan, OCLC President and CEO, presented an update of OCLC activities,
including progress in meeting goals established in its strategic
plan to extend the cooperative, introduce new services, and transform
WorldCat into a globally networked, Web-based information resource.
Mr. Jordan described progress in the Open WorldCat pilot project,
an effort to increase the visibility of libraries by making their
records available on the Web through commercial Web search engines.
He also described how libraries are making their special collections
more visible on the Web by using CONTENTdm, a software tool that
allows libraries to scan, post and catalog image collections and
make them available through WorldCat.
The Indiana Historical Society became the first institution to
register one of its special collections for metadata harvesting
by OCLC. The records have been harvested and subsequently converted
to the MARC format back at OCLC and loaded into WorldCat.
“If you are using FirstSearch, you can now click on a link
that will take you directly to these items,” said Mr. Jordan.
“Making these images available like this is a major step in
our strategy to transform WorldCat.”
Mr. Jordan discussed OCLC's recent installation of the FirstSearch
service on a new Oracle technology platform.
“This is very good news for our member libraries and their
users, who will have an even more powerful FirstSearch thanks to
enhancements made possible by the new platform,” said Mr. Jordan.
The migration continues on schedule, with other OCLC services scheduled
to be using the new technology by 2005.
“Going forward, our technological platform will rely on open
systems architectures and adhere to technical standards that promote
the cost-effective, worldwide sharing of information across platforms,
scripts, languages and cultural materials,” said Mr. Jordan.
In his remarks, Mr. Jordan also emphasized OCLC’s role as
an advocate for libraries. He pointed out that OCLC staff members
routinely serve on a variety of boards and steering committees organized
for the benefit of libraries.
“In our advocacy role, we also develop studies such as the
Environmental Scan that OCLC members can use in their planning
and in their own advocacy activities,” said Mr. Jordan.
The Environmental Scan
Cathy De Rosa, Vice President, OCLC Marketing and Library Services,
updated Members Council on discussion surrounding The 2003 OCLC
Environmental Scan: Pattern Recognition, a report produced for
the OCLC membership to examine significant issues and trends impacting
OCLC, libraries, museums, archives and other organizations.
Since its publication and distribution in print and online in late
2003, the Scan has generated a great deal of interest and discussion.
“I’ve had an opportunity to visit a number of your outstanding
institutions to lead some of the discussions the Scan has helped
to create,” Ms. De Rosa told delegates. “We want to present
this information at a high level so that we can uncover activities
that are happening in our environments, or are not happening in
our environments, that may be shaping our future—in the library
community, and in the OCLC cooperative.”
Ms. De Rosa pointed to three dominant patterns emerging from discussion:
a decrease in guided access to content; disaggregation of information;
and the need for collaboration.
OCLC services and projects continue to evolve with these trends
in mind, including: the Open WorldCat pilot; virtual reference with
QuestionPoint; Web services to meet the users where they are-on
the Web; and Research, to help OCLC meet user expectations of the
future.
Discussion will continue next year as the 2005 Members Council
primary theme will be “Pattern Recognition: Moving Libraries
Beyond their Comfort Zones.” It also will be the basis for
a symposium at the American Library Association annual conference
later this month.
The Library as ‘A Third Place’
One of the findings from discussion of the Scan recognized the
need for libraries to create “A Third Place”—a place
where people can go to “get away.” Sandy Yee, University
Librarian, Wayne State University, told Members Council how her
library was able to build an effective and efficient collection
of electronic resources for students and faculty in a facility that
also serves as a refuge.
Wayne State opened its undergraduate library in 1997 with more
than 500 public access computers available to the students, a very
small collection and a philosophy to have fewer than 100,000 monographs
in the building at any one time. “The library has a wonderful
variety of technology and study spaces,” said Ms. Yee. “It
has quickly become the ‘third place’ on the university
campus.”
Among the library’s priorities were to emphasize the shift
from print to electronic resources, and to capture and effectively
use quantifiable data in making collection decisions.
“Because of the type of collection we had, and because of
the technology we were providing at the library, we were in an excellent
position to move from print to electronic information,” she
said.
Today, the library is investing roughly 58 percent of its materials
budget on electronic resources, including e-books and digital collections.
In April 2002, the library started a patron-driven access model
for selecting electronic resources. The library loads in its catalog
all records for the academic titles available through NetLibrary,
and determines how to build their electronic collections based on
students’ selections.
“The patron-driven access model has worked very well for us
at Wayne State,” said Ms. Yee. “Our clients are helping
us to select our collections, and we’re very pleased to allow
them do that.”
Communication for the Collaborative
Emma Bradford Perry, Professor and Dean of Libraries, Southern
University, and Chair of the Ad Hoc Committee on Communication for
the Collaborative, summarized the committee’s work this year,
listed recommendations and moved a resolution on behalf of the committee
that was unanimously passed by council.
The resolution listed specific steps to strengthen communication
within the Members Council, between OCLC and the council, and between
the council and the OCLC membership. “Better communication
will help us become a better organization,” said Dean Perry.
2005 Members Council Executive Committee
At the conclusion of the 2003/2004 meeting, Mr. Seal passed the
gavel to Charles E. Kratz, Dean of Libraries and Director of Information
Resources Customer Service, Weinberg Memorial Library, University
of Scranton, who will serve as 2004/2005 Members Council President.
Council also elected Executive Committee members for 2004/2005.
Maggie Farrell, Dean of Libraries, University of Wyoming, was elected
Vice President/President-elect. Committee delegates at large are:
Ed Weissman, Assistant to the University Librarian, Cornell University;
Kathleen Imhoff, Executive Director and CEO, Lexington Public Library;
Benita Weber Vassallo, Chief of Library Services, Inter-American
Development Bank; and Michael LaCroix, Director, Creighton University
Library.
Delegates
also met in small group discussions, determined by specific interest
and library type. “We should not underestimate the importance
of our subject-oriented and type-of-library discussion groups because
that’s where so much of our work gets done and where we have
the most contact with OCLC management and staff,” said Mr.
Seal.
Members Council 25th Anniversary
Mr. Seal took a few minutes to note the impact of Members Council
on OCLC, the OCLC membership and on the worldwide library community
over the past 25 years.
“The minutes of the first Members Council meeting noted that
the board chair said the creation of the Council could have a critical
impact on OCLC. In looking back at my six years on Members Council,
my observation is that we are, indeed, making excellent progress
in strategically planning together and communicating more effectively
with the stakeholders in this worldwide cooperative,” said
Mr. Seal.
The next OCLC Members Council meeting is set for October 24-26,
in Dublin, Ohio.
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