Moving forward in challenging economic times

The Board of Trustees and OCLC management are acutely aware that the economic news coming from member libraries around the world is bleak–budget cuts, reduced hours, slashed programs.

Libraries are again being confronted to do more with less. In that vein, OCLC’s chartered objective of reducing the rate of rise of library costs is more compelling than ever.

Therefore, I am pleased to report that on February 9, the OCLC Board of Trustees unanimously adopted OCLC management’s recommendation to keep prices at current levels in 2009-2010.

Accordingly, there will be no price increases in OCLC cataloging and metadata services, resource sharing and access, and digital and preservation services. In those services where we provide access to third-party content (FirstSearch service, Electronic Collections Online and NetLibrary), we will pass through to libraries only royalty increases that are charged to us by content owners. OCLC will continue to keep its prices for library management/local systems as low as possible.

Both our current and next-generation services can help libraries thrive during these challenging economic times. That is why we intend to press on with our new services and programs in the coming year. Let me provide a few examples.

With WorldCat Local, we are creating a compelling user environment that provides a single interface to the collections of a library. It interoperates with locally maintained services, such as circulation, resource sharing and resolution to full text, to create an integrated experience for library users. WorldCat Local is a service provided to the library across the Internet that eliminates costs to the library for hosting, operating and maintaining software.

We are creating system-wide efficiencies in library workflow management. Our new database synchronization capability is enabling the Royal Library of the Netherlands and the National Library of Australia to keep their union catalogs in synch with WorldCat.

Next Generation Cataloging is capturing ONIX metadata upstream from publishers and vendors and enhancing that metadata in WorldCat, thereby reducing duplication of effort in member libraries as well as accelerating the availability of metadata for new publications.

The newly released WorldCat Navigator is now in use by the Orbis Cascade Alliance. It’s a next-generation resource sharing and delivery system for consortia that brings disparate systems together in a single interface.

We have just released CONTENTdm 5, which includes full Unicode support, a new search engine, scheduled indexing, improved EAD handling and expanded reporting capabilities.

Atlas Systems and OCLC have recently signed a perpetual licensing agreement that enables OCLC to support ILLiad and Odyssey and integrate the software more fully into OCLC delivery services in the coming years.

The MacArthur Foundation has awarded a $100,000 grant to Syracuse University, the University of Washington and OCLC to explore the creation of a more credible Web search experience based on input from librarians around the globe.

The HathiTrust has signed a preliminary agreement with OCLC to collaborate in adapting OCLC’s WorldCat Local as a public discovery interface for its digital repository that contains more than 2.5 million digitized volumes from the nation’s research libraries.

Last but not least, we have launched the WorldCat Mobile pilot in which library users are able to use their mobile phones to find materials in libraries.

Clearly, we are not standing still. Indeed, our strategy to build Web-scale and help libraries move their workflows to the Web has acquired even greater urgency.

We must continue to move forward, especially during difficult economic times. In the coming year, we will redouble our efforts to be more innovative and efficient and to create more value for the OCLC cooperative.

Jay Jordan
OCLC President and Chief Executive Officer

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