For libraries and other research institutions who want to invest money and staff in collaboratively designing their future services, the RLG Partnership is a global alliance of like-minded institutions that focuses on making operational processes more efficient and shaping new scholarly services by directly engaging senior managers. The RLG Partnership is supported by the full capacities of OCLC Research, informed by an international, system-wide perspective and connected to the broad array of OCLC products and services.
Activities supported by the RLG Partnership
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.
In this project, we will conduct studies that illuminate the features of the system-wide library, archive and museum (LAM) landscape through multi-institutional analysis of aggregated data.
Identification of barriers to implementing Encoded Archival Description (EAD) and practical suggestions for getting around those obstacles.
An investigation of the evolving roles of academic library staff and ways to address new needs in order to better support researchers.
A metadata publishing tool that transfers information between databases and different formats.
This work seeks to establish best practice for the disposition of print journals available in electronic form – i.e. when it is most appropriate to retain print back files on campus, when to store offsite, and when to deaccession entirely.
This work aims to characterize the generic business requirements for managing physical research library collections as a shared network resource.
This activity looks at existing archival collections assessment activities across institutions, puts them into context, and makes recommendations for best practice.
This activity conducts new research to provide evidence to inform possible changes in MARC metadata practices that could lead to better user access to the collective collection.
Develop use case scenarios for academic libraries and scholars, archivists and archival users, and institutional repositories describing their needs to uniquely identify and distinguish persons and organizations, then define the characteristics, functions, and data attributes of a cooperative "Identities Hub".
Facilitate refinement, publication and dissemination of EAC.
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.
Allows museums to disclose descriptions of collection items as well as pointers to digital surrogates.
This project involves issuing a provocative call to action, urging academic libraries to take a more significant role in their institution's mission to support research.
Investigation of what is needed in order to be able to offer responsible management of locally produced research data.
SHARES is a membership-wide program of expedited, cost-saving interlibrary lending that also develops innovative new methods to improve collections sharing.
Identify the user contributions that would enrich the descriptive metadata created by libraries, archives, and museums and the issues that need to be resolved to communicate and share user contributions on the network level.
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 study of the role of research libraries in the higher education research assessment regimes in five countries.
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.
A list of research support services will be tested with researchers to learn how well their needs are being met.
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