Chip Nilges
OCLC Vice President
New Services

To more powerful ways to cooperate

Build new services with Web 2.0 technologies

Web 2.0 resonates extremely well with OCLC’s public purpose, mission and vision. Key principles of Web 2.0 expounded by Tim O’Reilly have been central to the activities OCLC and its member libraries for decades. O’Reilly’s notion of “harnessing collective intelligence,” for instance, is at the heart of OCLC’s cataloging cooperative, resource sharing network, and virtual reference cooperative.

Touch the entire Web At the same time, OCLC and its member libraries can benefit tremendously from understanding Web 2.0 and applying its principles to their work. O’Reilly’s notion of using the Web as a platform, for instance, “to reach out to the entire web, to the edges and not just the center,” is critical for the success of the library community in a networked world.1  This is why OCLC is investing in Open WorldCat, through which we’re experimenting with various models for integrating the collections and services of member libraries into the consumer Web space.2 Our next major effort in this area will be the release, this spring, of a search box that will allow anyone with a Web browser to search all of WorldCat, no authentication required.

Collect user intelligence Another key lesson that O’Reilly emphasizes is the notion that “users add value.” For OCLC and its member libraries, this means expanding our definition of “collective intelligence” beyond the library professional to faculty, researchers, library patrons and others by building into our systems services that encourage these users contribute their expertise to the cooperative. OCLC’s work in this area to date has included a pilot program that allows anyone using Open WorldCat to contribute and share tables of contents, notes and reviews. This of course is just a beginning; over the next year we are planning to offer a variety of “social” services to allow non-cataloging library professionals, library patrons and others to contribute to and use WorldCat.  Services under consideration include tagging, list creation and sharing, citation management, personal cataloging, and the like. 

Release lightweight services Another aspect of Web 2.0 that informs our work is what O’Reilly refers to as “lightweight programming models.” These include Web services that make it easy to syndicate data and services outwards and systems that are designed to be easily “remixed” by others. OCLC began with production level Web services to integrate multiple service providers in the Webjunction program in 2002. This was followed by cataloging and ILL services in 2003.  Most recently, the OCLC Office of Research has released their xISBN service, a Web service that supplies International Standard Book Numbers (ISBNs) associated with individual works in WorldCat.3  The OpenURL Registry and Gateway allows provides a means for maintaining OpenURL resolver information in a single location that is available for use by anyone.4 Over the next year we will be even more active in this area as all new services are developed with Web services architectures. This allows us to release a variety of new services that libraries and other organizations can easily integrate into their Web sites.     

Build better data Perhaps the most important principal of Web 2.0 at OCLC is that “data is the next Intel inside.” O’Reilly argues that “every significant internet application to date has been backed by a specialized database.” For OCLC, this of course immediately calls to mind the decades of investment that member libraries have made in the quantity and quality of the metadata that comprises WorldCat. We’re involved in a number of projects that are intended to expand the database in ways that will ensure that it keeps pace with the changing composition of library collections. These include the recent acquisition of Openly Informatics, which allows us to expand WorldCat to include coverage of e-journals and other digital content; our ongoing efforts to encourage contribution to WorldCat by non-US libraries; our work with Google, the “G5” libraries, and the Open Content Alliance, which is aimed at ensuring that WorldCat accurately reflects the titles digitized through these efforts; and our adoption of the MARC21 Format for Holdings Data (MFHD), which will make resource sharing more efficient. 

As these projects suggest, Web 2.0 is a key concept for OCLC and will play an increasingly important role in our work in the coming year. We think the principles of Web 2.0 can help libraries collaborate in new and powerful ways and have dedicated ourselves to delivering on this promise.

1. All quotes taken from “What is Web 2.0:  Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software.”  Tim O’Reilly.  9/30/2005.  http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html

2. http://www.oclc.org/worldcat/open/

3. http://www.oclc.org/research/researchworks/xisbn/default.htm

4. http://www.oclc.org/productworks/urlresolver.htm

Into a new world of librarianship | To better bibliographic services