Members Council takes closer look at global library landscape

DUBLIN, Ohio, USA,  2 June 2005—In its final meeting of 2004/2005, OCLC Members Council elected Ernie Ingles (OCLC Canada), Associate Vice President, Learning Systems, University of Alberta Libraries, as Vice President/President-elect of the Members Council Executive Committee for 2005/2006.  He is the first delegate from outside the United States elected to that office.

Mr. Ingles will serve on the Executive Committee with incoming Members Council President Maggie Farrell (BCR), Dean of Libraries, University of Wyoming, and newly elected delegates-at-large: Shirley Baker (MLNC), Vice Chancellor, Information Technology and Dean, University Libraries, Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri; Jeff Baskin (Amigos), Director, William F. Laman Public Library, North Little Rock, Arkansas; James Estrada (NELINET), University Librarian, Fairfield University, Fairfield, Connecticut, and Jay Starratt (ILLINET), Dean of Library/Information Services, Southern Illinois University–Edwardsville.

Charles Kratz (PALINET), 2004/2005 Members Council President and Dean of the Library & Information Fluency, University of Scranton, Scranton, Pennsylvania, presided over the meeting.  Discussion centered on findings from the OCLC Environmental Scan, a report produced for the OCLC worldwide membership to examine significant issues and trends impacting OCLC, libraries, museums, archives and other organizations, now and in the future.  This third and final session focused on strengthening OCLC’s and Members Council’s global strategies.

The future of libraries

Keynote speaker Kurt De Belder, University Librarian at Leiden in The Netherlands, discussed his perspective on the future of academic libraries around the world.  Mr. De Belder noted that libraries are working hard for their users—introducing new services and technologies for users, making more content available.  He said that library usage is up, operations are more efficient and effective than ever, and users seems to appreciate all that libraries are doing.  “Library life is good,” said Mr. De Belder. “But we are starting to notice some fault lines in the last few years.”

Mr. De Belder said that information overload, varieties of information objects, and changing demands in research and learning are among the challenges facing academic libraries worldwide.

He noted that academic libraries have components in place to overcome many of these challenges, such as rich metadata, a close relationship with faculty, substantial investment in information technology, and research and development investments that have yielded important building blocks to improve access to information.

But he said libraries have got to “make metadata and data work for libraries” so that libraries can be as successful with users as information providers such as Amazon.com, Yahoo! and Google.

“We’ve noticed in libraries that a lot of our information has been compartmentalized—it has been put into databases that are not accessible and not findable through the Internet,” noted Mr. De Belder. “If it is not in Google or Yahoo!, our customers get the sense that it does not exist.”

“I think Open WorldCat is a wonderful example of a resource that has been unlocked in favor of Web services,” said Mr. De Belder. “Open WorldCat is an example of how libraries and library organizations should be thinking much more strategically.”

To be successful in the new research environment, academic libraries will have to filter and select information for users, structure the content, integrate a variety of relevant content, provide essential information at the right time, and provide a context for users, Mr. De Belder said.

Responding to Mr. De Belder’s presentation on academic and scholarly libraries was Stewart Bodner (Nylink), Associate Chief of the General Reference Division, New York Public Library, who provided a public library perspective on the future of libraries.  “I think we need to develop better models of return on investment,” he said.  He noted that libraries need to make “decisions based on data analysis and not opinion.”

Mr. Bodner said the library community must develop data to demonstrate to funders that libraries provide a significant return on taxpayers’ investment. He cited as an example a recent study by the State Library of Florida that demonstrated that Florida’s public libraries return at least $6.54 for every $1.00 invested from all sources, and that libraries help create jobs, increase wages and positively impact Florida’s gross regional product. “These kinds of statistics resonate with our funders,” he said.

Mr. Bodner noted that because fewer people want to fund the public good, libraries must take a more market-oriented approach.  He called on library schools to “develop managers who can manage change.”

Making data work harder for libraries

Lorcan Dempsey, Chief Strategist and Vice President, OCLC Research, took Mr. De Belder’s call to make data work for libraries a step further in his presentation, “Making Data Work Harder.” Mr. Dempsey noted that libraries invest quite a bit in data but do not extract as much value as they might from it. “Unless we release more value, then the argument for this investment becomes weaker,” said Mr. Dempsey.

Mr. Dempsey discussed OCLC’s efforts to create an infrastructure and services that make data work for libraries in a new way that is more appropriate for the open Web. And he said the kind of data that librarians provide have more depth, and therefore, more potential for a variety of uses.

“One of the major issues underlying the Open WorldCat program is that it is a systemic change—a different way of providing access to library resources,” said Mr. Dempsey. “I think moving forward the library community will have to make its data work harder. And if we do that, I think that we will have more to build upon in the open Web environment.”

Mr. Dempsey said the Open WorldCat program can bring Web searchers to libraries much more efficiently than if individual libraries tried to direct them to their OPACs, no matter how user-friendly those systems may be.

“It's a waste of time making your library’s OPAC like Amazon or Google if nobody goes to it in the first place,” said Mr. Dempsey.  “The issue is increasingly: how does a library put its data or services in places where people are, and bring them back to the library? That becomes an organizational issue because it’s very difficult for every individual library to do that in every case.  With Open WorldCat, we are trying to provide an organizational framework to bring users from the open Web into library systems.”

Mr. Dempsey said library service would increasingly be compared with the instant gratification available from successful services on the Web.  He said libraries must concentrate on making sure users can move successfully from discovery of what they need on the open Web to fulfillment—getting the appropriate item.

He also said OCLC is working on several projects that make the information-rich data in WorldCat work harder for libraries in ways that commercial Web sites would envy. For example, OCLC Research work with FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) rolls all manifestations of a work into a single entity, so that searchers can find the entity they are looking for, and then drill down to the appropriate version needed.

This type of work illustrates how the “large legacy investment of structured data” that is WorldCat can work for libraries in ways that commercial sites cannot.

New WorldCat, Members Council become more ‘global’ in scope

OCLC President and CEO Jay Jordan noted that new capabilities in WorldCat make it possible for OCLC to be more inclusive.  The new WorldCat supports not only MARC, but Dublin Core, FRBR, Unicode and other standards and can accommodate faster loading of data, OAI harvesting, new data formats and new views.  “These capabilities are integral to our strategy to extend the cooperative worldwide,” said Mr. Jordan.  “Thanks to our new technological platform, we now have the means to support even more languages and character sets for more libraries irrespective of geography.”

Mr. Jordan also noted recent additions to WorldCat: The SciELO Brazil database contains about 40,000 records describing and linking to articles from 130 freely available Brazilian scientific and technical journals; the Finnish National Bibliography added more than 600,000 records describing publications from and about Finland as cataloged by the National Library of Finland; the LinkUK database load processed 3 million records, and added 7.2 million holdings and 735,000 new records, all contributed by more than 75 public libraries in the U.K.

“We are indeed becoming more global,” said Mr. Jordan. He noted that there are now nine delegates on Members Council from outside the United States. In the past five years, the number of libraries participating in OCLC outside the United States has increased from 6,000 to 10,000, and the number of countries from 75 to 96.

“The political and cultural barriers to global cooperation will continue to challenge us,” concluded Mr. Jordan. “I believe that the Members Council can and must play a significant role in helping OCLC overcome these barriers as we continue our journey to provide more universal, affordable access to information for people around the world.”

The next Members Council meeting will be October 23–25, 2005, at the Marriott Northwest in Dublin, Ohio.

About Members Council
The 66-delegate Members Council supports OCLC’s mission by serving as the key discussion forum and communications link between member libraries, regional networks and other partners, and OCLC management.  By providing a channel for recommendations and questions from Members Council delegates, approving changes in the Code of Regulations, and electing six members of the Board of Trustees, Members Council helps shape the future direction of OCLC.

About OCLC
Headquartered in Dublin, Ohio, OCLC Online Computer Library Center is a nonprofit organization that has provided computer-based cataloging, reference, resource sharing and preservation services to 52,000 libraries in 96 countries and territories.  For more information, visit <www.oclc.org>.

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