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The value of library cooperation
2010 is the first year of the new global governance structure for the OCLC cooperative—a more inclusive, representative model designed to extend participation to more libraries and cultural heritage institutions around the world. As Chair of the OCLC Board of Trustees, Larry Alford, Dean of Libraries, Temple University, is committed to enhancing direct and open communication to get more involvement from and bring the cooperative closer to libraries. Regular and timely communication, he says, will make membership more meaningful and help all libraries, archives and museums be engaged in the conversation that shapes the cooperative’s efforts. NextSpace talked with Larry about the value of cooperation to the global library community in these tough economic times following the February 7-8 OCLC board meeting in Dublin, Ohio. What is special about our library cooperative? The relationship and interaction among members and OCLC is both unique and extraordinary. And we are enlarging this dialog with a new global governance structure, which includes Regional Councils around the world that are amplifying cooperation and making it easier for libraries, archives and museums to have a voice and be involved. How has the cooperative stayed vibrant for so long? During the 42-year life of the cooperative, OCLC and member libraries have been united by a strong sense of public purpose and a fervent belief in access to information for all. The values of cooperation, sharing and working together for the common good have shaped our existence and guided our path through momentous changes in society and technology. Those values are as relevant and as important today as they were in 1967. Can you give a recent example of how the membership has helped direct the path of the cooperative? One issue that comes to mind immediately, about which there has been a lot of conversation in the blogosphere, is the WorldCat record use policy. The OCLC board and management promulgated what we thought was a policy that would help protect WorldCat and continue to enable it to be a vital resource for libraries around the world. And the membership very clearly said to us that they disagreed, and there needed to be other ways to protect this asset that has been built by librarians. The board listened and appointed a new group representing librarians from Asia and Europe as well as the United States and the Americas to grapple with the issues surrounding a record use policy. Their recommendations are now being shared with every member library. So I think that is an area where clearly members had a very direct impact on the direction of the organization and will continue to have a direct impact. The board is committed to listening to the membership. I like to say that a super majority of the board are librarians—active, working librarians. I’m dean of a library, some of my colleagues are directors of public libraries and directors of other academic libraries; there’s a national librarian on the board as well as one sitting university president and one university president emeritus who is now the director of a museum and library. All of us, every day in our working lives, make decisions about furthering access to information for our constituents and when we come together as an OCLC board, it is those users and the libraries that serve them that are foremost in our minds. I hear sometimes that some our colleagues believe that the OCLC board becomes too close to OCLC as an organization rather than to serve the members. But as I’ve also said publicly in other venues, every decision that the board makes is informed by the public purpose, the charter of OCLC, which is to strengthen libraries and librarianship, to reduce the rate of rise of cost to libraries and to further access to the world’s information. And I believe that all of my fellow trustees are deeply committed to that public purpose and to ensuring that OCLC stays on the path. The economic news coming from members libraries around the world remains bleak. What advice would you offer libraries today about getting through these difficult times? They are very difficult times. Almost every librarian with whom I speak talks about the budget cuts that their libraries have faced and the need to make some really hard choices. But I believe that we need to make those decisions thinking about the long term and not the short term. At Temple University, my staff and I thought very carefully about how our decisions would affect what we’re building for the future in order to make sure we are preserving what is most important. And I think that has implications for our cooperative. The cooperative and WorldCat are vital to the future. So I hope that as librarians make what I know are very difficult decisions about budget cuts, they will consider that OCLC is the one organization in the world that is governed by librarians, owned by librarian members and dedicated to strengthening libraries—not out of a profit motive but because it is important for people to have access to information. What does the future hold for libraries? Despite the tough economy, I’m very bullish about our future. I get questions about whether libraries will survive in the world of Google and the search engine. My own library and the public libraries in Philadelphia and our surrounding area are used more heavily now than ever before, by thousands of people. People need information, they need tools that enable discovery, and they need librarians—who are experts in using information—to assist them. If you go into a library today, it’s an exciting place. I think of them as the vital intellectual center on a campus or in a community or in a school that brings people together for learning, for knowledge, for entertainment. There’s nothing more exciting than working with a student as she suddenly discovers and becomes curious about a whole new area of knowledge. Libraries are vital to making that to happen. How about the future of the cooperative? Tough times present opportunities, and some very bright people in libraries and at OCLC are working in partnership to provide new solutions to some of the problems that exist in libraries. Their innovative efforts are creating a new framework for maximizing our impact and preparing us to be a greater force for good on our campuses and in our communities. That’s one of the most exciting parts of being on the Board of Trustees, seeing the progress of these new ideas that could transform our community. What are some of the new solutions? They all start with WorldCat. The size and diversity of WorldCat is amazing. And so is its unique value to libraries. Many of us who have been involved in the cooperative for 30 years are well versed in how much WorldCat has saved libraries by streamlining staff workflows in cataloging and resource sharing. Today, WorldCat is becoming a premier discovery tool on the Web. Through WorldCat.org, we are integrating the collections and services of libraries into the consumer Web space to reach Web users who are now more likely to turn first to their Web browser—not their library—for information. We are partnering with Google, Yahoo! and other Internet companies to put library records and holdings in the results lists of search engines, online bibliographies and online booksellers in order to drive traffic to libraries. And we are succeeding. Each month, there are about 12 million page views of WorldCat.org that originate from search engine sites and other partners. Traffic from WorldCat.org to library services—OPACs, ILL services, full-text articles, virtual reference services—average some 800,000 per month, with approximately 80 percent of click-throughs going to library OPACs. In addition, new partnerships are underway with cellular phone providers and others to help grow the reach of library services and increase the impact of mobile devices. WorldCat Local is the latest example of how members can benefit from their combined investment in WorldCat. WorldCat Local is a service that allows users to search the library collection with one search, as well as see options for accessing resources their library doesn’t own. WorldCat Local is also the first step towards Web-scale Management Services that will bring new opportunities to increase efficiencies in collection management and reduce costs for libraries. More than 600 members are currently using WorldCat Local. We need to continue these long-term investments that will further support and strengthen libraries. Can you explain what you mean by Web scale? Our vision of Web scale is to bring the power of cloud computing to library management activities. These network-level tools for managing library collections through circulation and delivery, print and licensed acquisitions, and license management are being built with new technologies and platforms that allow libraries to customize workflows based on the changing nature of their collections, their users and their business processes. OCLC is working closely with a Library Advisory Council and four pilot library groups to develop and test these Web-scale services. What a difference these tools are going to make. We are confident that they will bring additional cost savings and efficiencies to library workflows. The breadth and depth of the WorldCat database uniquely positions the OCLC cooperative to provide this unparalleled set of services for library automation and management; and it gives members unprecedented opportunity to share data and workflows that they have never been able to share before. The opportunities are enormous to transform libraries and OCLC. Talk a little about the importance of WorldCat to the global library community and to information seekers around the world? The value of cooperation is represented through WorldCat. WorldCat is critical to providing access to deep research collections that facilitate research and learning. It is an incomparable resource that is incredibly diverse. It provides access to the record of human history and culture around the world. It records not only the record of human achievement but human mistakes, which is so important for all of us to understand and to know about. It is the important way for librarians to share resources and the intellectual effort that enables access to those resources. It is the manifestation of Fred Kilgour’s great idea. I often talk about the remarkable intellectual achievement of librarianship that makes it so easy to find one book in a library. My library at Temple has 4 million volumes and librarians have made it really easy to simply walk to a location and pull that book off. Think about that compared to the results of a Google search or another search engine. I think WorldCat has allowed librarians to really share that effort across the world to make it even easier to find information. What do librarians need to do to keep the vision alive? Librarians need to continue to work together to build WorldCat and to share their intellectual effort and resources through WorldCat. Librarians need to continue to build WorldCat as the global union catalog, as a way to provide access to the knowledge found in thousands and thousands of libraries around the world. Many generations now, at least four generations of librarians, have worked hard to build this incomparable resource and I believe those of us who are responsible for today and will become responsible for it in the future need to think about our commitment to those librarians who came before us but more importantly to the users of libraries around the world who need information. It’s our responsibility to continue to build a strong WorldCat to provide access to the collections in libraries. Any final thoughts? I want to thank you for your continued participation as a member of the OCLC cooperative. Your library’s contributions have been a key component to the rich development of WorldCat, and your commitment to cooperation, sharing and working together for the common good are vital to the future. The cooperative is stronger as a result of your ongoing support. I value your ideas, and welcome any thoughts you have on how to make our cooperative more productive for us all. Please call or write with any thoughts you have.
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