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Research : Activities : Mobilizing Unique Materials

Mobilizing Unique Materials

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:

  • introducing cooperative models of acquiring, managing and disclosing collections
  • helping libraries, archives and museums achieve a common understanding of the processes for which they should be responsible
  • demonstrating these new frameworks through prototypes, and
  • enabling them through open source code and architectures.

ArchiveGrid  OCLC Research Library Partnership icon (P)

OCLC Research is developing a new, freely available discovery system for ArchiveGrid to replace the current subscription service by June 2012.

Born-Digital Special Collections  OCLC Research Library Partnership icon (P)

This project focuses on enhancing the effective management of born-digital materials as they intersect with special collections and archives practices in research libraries.

Rough and Ready: Typescript Finding Aid Conversion  OCLC Research Library Partnership icon (P)

OCLC Research will undertake a small scale experiment to explore the effectiveness of tools and techniques for bringing offline archival descriptions to the open Web.

Sharing Special Collections  OCLC Research Library Partnership icon (P)

Streamlining procedures for successful delivery of rare and unique materials to users will maximize use of increasingly limited staff and financial resources.

Survey of Special Collections and Archives in the UK and Ireland  OCLC Research Library Partnership icon (P)

OCLC Research and Research Libraries UK (RLUK) will survey library special collections holdings and practices of RLUK members & OCLC Research Library Partnership institutions in the UK and Ireland.

ResearchWorks icon (RW)Some of the activities listed here have prototypes or demonstrations you can explore and play with. You can find a list of just those hands-on activities in ResearchWorks.

Software icon (SW)A few of these activities have generated software that you can download and build upon. Go to our software page for a list of only those activities.

ORL Partnership icon (P)The OCLC Research Library Partnership has sponsored the activities with this mark.

OCLC Research on YouTube

Check out the OCLC Research YouTube Channel for a fresh, succinct view of what OCLC Research staff are up to.