What’s newat OCLC Research

No single library can hold every item its users may need, so resource sharing networks are essential to expanding access to materials. OCLC Research’s SHARES working group has developed several free tools to help support best practices in resource sharing.

Interlibrary Loan Best Practices

The proposed Principles and Protocols for Sharing Special Collections through Interlibrary Loan aims to support lending policies that promote access, enrich research, and foster a collaborative environment between lending partner libraries. These resource sharing tools were developed by member institutions of SHARES, an international resource sharing consortium within the OCLC Research Library Partnership program that collaborates to share knowledge, expertise, and ideas as well as materials.

The Operationalizing the Art Research Collective Collection project investigated challenges faced by art research collections by exploring opportunities for collaboration between art, academic, and independent research libraries. The project was designed to identify new possibilities for collaboration and partnership models that support sustainable, ongoing availability of rich collections of art libraries to researchers, wherever they may be.

The project outcomes are shared in two reports:

• Sustaining Art Research Collections: Using Data to Explore Collaboration—Models how quantitative analysis of library collection and activity data can be leveraged by library leaders to inform decisions about collaboration opportunities supporting art research collections.
• Sustaining Art Research Collections: Case Studies in Collaboration—Shares recommendations for building successful collaborations and identifies typical challenges library partnerships navigate based on case study research of current library collaborations. 

• Transitioning to the Next Generation of Metadata: Traces how metadata is evolving and considers the impact this transition may have on library services.
• Transforming Metadata into Linked Data: Shares project findings where OCLC and five partner institutions investigated methods for—and the feasibility of—transforming metadata into linked data to improve the discoverability and management of digitized cultural materials using CONTENTdm.
• Reimagine Descriptive Workflows: Contextualizes the challenges facing the library and information field in inclusive and reparative metadata work and offers a framework of guidance that can help frame institutions’ local priorities and areas for change.

The Public Health Crisis Management Playbook is available online and as a downloadable PDF document and covers the following topics:

• Crisis leadership—Starting points for crisis management and communications planning with internal audiences (staff), external audiences (public), and partners
• Facilities and operations—Considerations for decision-making about collections management, space configuration, building systems, and safety protocols
• Crisis decision-making and risk management—Risk assessment, information gathering, and decision-making during uncertain times
• Resource networks—Tools for identifying partners and maintaining collaborative relationships, including an actor mapping tool for visualizing potential partners during a crisis
• Resources for more information—All resources used to develop the playbook, as well as additional materials that may prove helpful in developing a crisis management plan

Working in consultation with Shift Collective, OCLC hosted a conversation among community stakeholders who discussed how to address the systemic issues of bias and inequity within our current collection description infrastructure. The input from the convening, shaped by substantive input from advisory group leaders was published in the report Reimagine Descriptive Workflows: A Community-informed Agenda for Reparative and Inclusive Descriptive Practice that provides two action pathways:

• A guiding framework for making necessary, fundamental shifts both in organizational culture and individual mindset to enact transformative and sustainable change in the descriptive process.
• Recommendations for operational changes that organizations can make to reimagine descriptive practices in their local and global contexts.

Improving Access to Civil Legal Justice Through Public Libraries provides training and resources to library staff to help close the justice gap in their communities by enhancing their reference skills to connect people in need of civil legal help to reliable information, resources, and services. Through OCLC’s partnership with Legal Services Corporation (LSC) and in consultation with law librarians, OCLC’s WebJunction developed:

• Navigating Civil Legal Issues of Natural Disasters, an on-demand course series introducing civil legal issues that arise during natural disasters and how libraries can help.
• Creating Pathways to Civil Legal Justice, an on-demand course series that helps public library staff strengthen their ability to identify civil legal issues and connect community members to relevant information and resources.
• Eviction Resources for Libraries, a collection of resources to help library staff respond to specific questions related to eviction and housing insecurity, where timing is critical to prevention.

OCLC's WebJunction partnered with Washington State University’s (WSU) Center for Digital Scholarship and Curation to create a series of free online digital stewardship courses to meet the needs of staff at small tribal and public libraries, archives, and museums.

Creating, managing, preserving, and sharing digital collections can be daunting for staff at small and rural cultural institutions. This undertaking is resource-intensive, requiring technology, significant staff time, new skills, and an ongoing commitment to maintain them. Understanding the full lifecycle of digital stewardship is critical to successful digital collections, but these institutions often face barriers in accessing adequate training and resources.

The courses guide learners through the lifecycle of digital stewardship, while creating an action plan for their library to accomplish the entire range of tasks and activities necessary to successfully create and share digital collections. The full seven-course series is now available.

Research information management (RIM) is a rapidly growing area of investment in US research universities. While RIM practices are mature in Europe—with a community of practice led by euroCRIS—and other locales in support of nationalized reporting requirements, RIM practices at US research universities have taken a different—and characteristically decentralized—course. A complex environment characterized by multiple use cases, stakeholders, and systems has resulted.

To give context for institutional leaders to examine their local practices, the Research Information Management in the United States project published a two-part report that presents a thorough examination of RIM practices, goals, stakeholders, and system components at US research universities.

Part 1—Findings and Recommendations offers a summary of six discrete RIM use cases and proposes a RIM system framework and recommendations for RIM stakeholders. Part 2—Case Studies offers an in-depth narrative of the RIM practices at five US research institutions.

For up-to-date information, this ongoing series from the OCLC Research blog, Hanging Together, covers Research Information Management in the United States reports.

OCLC published five reports on its research findings:

• Summary of Research—Synthesizes findings from across all research activities on the NAFAN project
• Pop-up Survey—Summarizes results from a national survey of online archive users on their search behavior, information needs, and demographic characteristics
• User Interviews—Details findings from interviews with archival aggregation end users on their information needs and information-seeking behavior
• Focus Group Interviews—Shares outcomes from discussions with archivists about their needs for describing collections and contributing description to an archival aggregation
• EAD Analysis—Analyzes EAD data as raw material for building a finding aid aggregation by looking for common data structures present and identifying gaps that could impede user discovery

This OCLC Research report delivers tools and insights to support academic libraries in making strategic decisions about cross-institutional collaboration opportunities to acquire capacity. This report provides:

• A model of common sourcing strategies available to libraries
• Key considerations and trade-offs associated with these strategies
• A summary of foundational economic concepts that help deepen understanding of the collaboration option

Library Collaboration as a Strategic Choice will be of special interest to senior academic library leadership, library consortia/group leadership, and academic library staff responsible for managing collaborative relationships.

Each year, OCLC Global Council selects an area of focus to engage in meaningful conversations with the library community around shared challenges facing libraries around the world. This important work spans not only geographic regions, but all types of libraries, and provides opportunities for professionals at all levels of their career to participate by adding their voice and ideas to the conversation.

The 2022 area of focus offers a four-part recorded webinar series on “Libraries and Open Ecosystems.” In this series, OCLC Global Council and OCLC Research explore the broader impact of the library in its local ecosystem, that is, the library’s symbiotic relationship with the social, educational, informational, and environmental infrastructure of the community where it is located.

On-demand webinars from this series include:

• Creating a New Model Library
  This session focuses on changes made both before and during the pandemic that influenced leaders’ visions for their libraries during the next five years, including library participation in open ecosystems.
• Libraries and Open Ecosystems: Metadata challenges and opportunities in the open ecosystem
  Speakers discuss the next generation of metadata, including contributing environmental factors, and the findings of the Reimagine Descriptive Workflows project.

• Libraries and Open Ecosystems: The library’s role in open research
  OCLC Research staff and library leaders from OCLC’s Global Council discuss the library’s role in open research.
• Libraries and Open Ecosystems: Creating a New Model Library
  OCLC Research staff and library leaders from OCLC’s Global Council for a discussion on emerging library models.

This high-level briefing synthesizes findings and recommendations within the context of work experiences, collections experiences, and engagement experiences. And within each of these contexts, it identifies New Model Library transformations occurring through four areas of impact:

• Agility—Taking quick and innovative action in response to changing circumstances and expectations
• Collaboration—Working with stakeholders to lead change within libraries, institutions, and communities
• Virtualization—Expanding online library experiences for staff and the community
• Space—Finding new ways to engage within the physical library