We're working to bring about greater collaboration among libraries, archives and museums by surfacing models for sharing data, services and expertise. Our objective in this area is to achieve economies and efficiencies that permit the unique materials in libraries, archives and museums to be effectively described, properly disclosed, successfully discovered and appropriately delivered. This includes:
Data mining of the one million MARC records for archival materials in WorldCat will provide a systemwide overview of descriptive practice and enable recommendations for more effective description and discovery.
Collect query logs, Web logs, and various web analytics; evaluate their usefulness for research about how researchers use archival cross-searching networks and other tools that archives use to publish their finding aids.
Identification of barriers to implementing Encoded Archival Description (EAD) and practical suggestions for getting around those obstacles.
This activity looks at existing archival collections assessment activities across institutions, puts them into context, and makes recommendations for best practice.
This project attempts to mitigate the risk aversion that is related to rights management and special collections, often interfering with our mission of providing access to those collections.
An investigation into the incentives and strategies for deep and transformative collaboration among libraries, archives and museums (or LAMs).
In order to centralize information about stolen and missing rare books and special collections, this working group developed a procedure to “tag” records in WorldCat.org. The tagged records are then automatically fed to a blog, missingmaterials.org. Simultaneously, holdings are set in WorldCat, in order to alert prospective buyers and sellers.
This project creates tools supporting standards-based data sharing in the museum community, and provides insights into the characteristics of large aggregations of museum descriptions.
Streamlining procedures for successful delivery of rare and unique materials to users will maximize use of increasingly limited staff and financial resources.
This working group is addressing workflow and policy issues arising from digitizing (and copying) materials from special collections.
A detailed survey of more than 300 special collections and archives in academic and research libraries throughout the United States and Canada will identify norms across the community as well as define needs for community action and further research.
Librarians' Toolbox:
