Category: OCLC

"OCLC Introduces AI-generated Book Recommendations in WorldCat.org and WorldCat Find beta"


OCLC is beta testing book recommendations generated by artificial intelligence (AI) in WorldCat.org, the website that allows users to explore the collections of thousands of libraries through a single search. Searchers can now obtain AI-enabled book recommendations for print and e-books and then look for those items in libraries near them. The AI-generated book recommendations beta is now available in WorldCat.org and WorldCat Find, the mobile app extension for WorldCat.org.

https://tinyurl.com/44j4ascr

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"Clarivate and OCLC Settle Lawsuit"


Clarivate continues to deny OCLCs allegations of wrong-doing and maintains that the issue lay between OCLC and its customers, who sought to co-create an efficient community platform for sharing of bibliographic records. Clarivate will not develop a record exchange system of MARC records that include records which OCLC has claimed are subject to its policy and contractual limitations. Clarivate will bear its own fees and costs.

https://cutt.ly/vN3RDOx

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"OCLC Awarded Mellon Foundation Grant to Register Library Retention Commitments for Print Serials in WorldCat"

OCLC has released "OCLC Awarded Mellon Foundation Grant to Register Library Retention Commitments for Print Serials in WorldCat."

Here's an excerpt:

OCLC, working closely with the Center for Research Libraries (CRL), has been awarded an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant to enhance the underlying infrastructure of the OCLC WorldCat database and CRL’s Print Archives Preservation Registry (PAPR) to accommodate and make accessible actionable data for shared print serials management.

The two-year grant, for $1,001,000, will support a joint OCLC and CRL Shared Print Data Infrastructure project. The initiative will modify WorldCat, the world's most comprehensive database of information about library collections, to enable registration of print serial retention commitments and make archived holdings data available to inform library decision-making.

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OCLC 2016-2017 Annual Report Released

OCLC has released its 2016-2017 annual report.

Here's an excerpt:

OCLC's revenues from library services in FY17 increased by $5 million over the prior year as more than 450 libraries worldwide are now using WorldShare Management Services. . . .

Although OCLC's operating results in FY17 reported a loss before portfolio activity, our financial results improved significantly from the previous year, reflecting the impact of higher revenues, completion of facility renovations, and major technology projects, as well as our ongoing efforts to minimize general and administrative cost increases.

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OCLC Releases Its 2015-2016 Annual Report

OCLC has released its 2015-2016 annual report.

Here's an excerpt:

In FY16 we took on some big challenges. We advanced our shared mission. We undertook the largest technical upgrade in our history. We strengthened member engagement. We improved customer service. We saw a steady improvement in our financial results. And, we became the fastest-growing library services platform provider in the world.

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"Rachel Frick named Executive Director, OCLC Research Library Partnership"

OCLC has released "Rachel Frick named Executive Director, OCLC Research Library Partnership."

Here's an excerpt:

Frick will lead the program of OCLC Research that undertakes significant, innovative, collective action to benefit scholars and researchers. In this role, she will direct a team of program officers who are widely recognized for their efforts to advance innovation, learning, and connecting libraries to the future.

Frick has nearly 20 years of broad-based library experience, most recently with the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) where she was Director of Business Development. In this position, she worked on DPLA's sustainability plan and forged new relationships and strategic partnerships to build DPLA's visibility and impact, such as the Open eBooks program. . . .

Prior to her work at DPLA, Frick served as the Digital Library Federation (DLF) Program Director at the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) for four years. In her capacity as DLF Director, she was instrumental in building a large and diverse community of practitioners, working to advance research, teaching and learning through the application of digital library research, technology and services.

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"OCLC Prints Last Library Catalog Cards"

OCLC has released "OCLC Prints Last Library Catalog Cards."

Here's an excerpt:

OCLC printed its last library catalog cards today, officially closing the book on what was once a familiar resource for generations of information seekers who now use computer catalogs and online search engines to access library collections around the world.

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OCLC Makes WorldCat Works Available as Linked Data

OCLC has made WorldCat Works available as linked data.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

OCLC has made 197 million bibliographic work descriptions—WorldCat Works—available as linked data, a format native to the Web that will improve discovery of library collections through a variety of popular sites and Web services.

Release of this data marks another step toward providing interconnected linked data views of WorldCat. By making this linked data available, library collections can be exposed to the wider Web community, integrating these collections and making them more easily discoverable through websites and services that library users visit daily, such as Google, Wikipedia and social networks.

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Jay Jordan Will Continue as President and CEO of OCLC

Jay Jordan will continue as President and CEO of OCLC.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The OCLC Board of Trustees has concluded that rather than moving forward with the appointment of Jack B. Blount as its President and CEO, it is in the best interest of OCLC to have Jay Jordan continue serving in these capacities. Mr. Jordan has agreed to postpone his retirement to continue leading OCLC.

The OCLC Board of Trustees believes Mr. Jordan's strong track record, his skills as a leader, and his ability to identify and navigate emerging trends, make him uniquely qualified to serve the nearly 72,000 institutions that use OCLC services.

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OCLC Names Jack B. Blountas Its President and CEO

OCLC has named Jack B. Blountas its President and CEO.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Jack B. Blount, an executive with experience leading several technology organizations in a career spanning 35 years, has been named OCLC President and CEO.

Mr. Blount was most recently President and CEO of Alpha Bay Corporation, a global technologies and services provider based in Salt Lake City, Utah. From 2002 to 2005, he was President and CEO of Dynix Corporation, a technology-based library services organization that was acquired by Sirsi in 2005 to form SirsiDynix. . . .

Mr. Blount founded Alpha Bay in 2005 and served as Chairman of the Board, President and Chief Executive Officer from its inception through May 2012.

He began his career in enterprise systems with IBM more than 35 years ago. Since then, he has held numerous leadership positions with many of technology's most influential organizations, including IBM, Novell, Borland and JD Edwards. While at Novell, he expanded international operations, spending 80 percent of his time in Europe and Japan for several years. Mr. Blount has combined his technical background with expertise in management, operations, marketing and sales to deliver results as an executive with these influential organizations.

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Lasting Impact: Sustainability of Disciplinary Repositories

OCLC Research has released Lasting Impact: Sustainability of Disciplinary Repositories.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

This report offers a quick environmental scan of the repository landscape and then focuses on disciplinary repositories—those subject-based, often researcher-initiated loci for research information.

Written by Senior Program Officer Ricky Erway, Lasting Impact: Sustainability of Disciplinary Repositories is intended to help librarians support researchers in accessing and disseminating research information. The report includes profiles of seven repositories with a focus on their varied business models. It concludes with a discussion of sustainability, including funding models, factors that contribute to a repository's success, and ways to bring in additional revenue.

| Institutional Repository and ETD Bibliography 2011 | Digital Scholarship |

WorldCat’s 40th Anniversary

WorldCat is now 40 years old.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

On August 26, 1971, the OCLC Online Union Catalog and Shared Cataloging system (now known as WorldCat) began operation. That first day, from a single terminal, catalogers at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, cataloged 133 books online. Today, WorldCat comprises more than 240 million records representing more than 1.7 billion items in OCLC member libraries worldwide.

"We congratulate the thousands of librarians and catalogers around the world who have helped to build WorldCat over the past 40 years keystroke by keystroke, record by record," said Jay Jordan, OCLC President and CEO. "We who work at OCLC are proud to have been a part of this remarkable story, and I want to thank our member institutions and employees for the years of dedicated effort that helped build this unique resource. Fred Kilgour's vision—improving access to information through library cooperation—is every bit as vital today as it was in 1971. This anniversary is an important milestone in a shared journey that, I believe, will continue for many decades to come." . . .

The first OCLC cathode ray tube terminal was the Irascope Model LTE, which was manufactured by Spiras Systems. OCLC deployed 68 LTES, one of which is now on permanent display in the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., and another in a new OCLC Museum dedicated today in Dublin, Ohio. The LTE was connected to OCLC via a dedicated, leased telephone line from AT&T; message traffic moved at the rate of 2400 baud (2,400 symbols per second).

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OCLC Research Library Partnership to Launch in July 2011

The OCLC Research Library Partnership will launch on 7/1/11.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The OCLC Research Library Partnership is a new entity that will replace the RLG Partnership on 1 July 2011 and is a locus for OCLC's increased support of the research library community. It is an organization born out of the successful merger of RLG and OCLC in 2006, when expert staff from the two organizations were blended into one team with a combined effort directed toward supporting research libraries and archives. The merger created a venue where affiliated institutions could collectively identify, analyze, prioritize and design scalable solutions to shared information challenges. . . .

OCLC recognizes the valuable contribution that research libraries play in the cooperative and wants to provide a specific venue for engagement around shared issues. This venue is the OCLC Research Library Partnership, and it represents OCLC's renewed commitment to the research library community. OCLC's increased investment in the Partnership enables a significant reduction in the annual Partnership dues, which will, in turn, enable a greater range of institutions to participate in the Partnership in the future.

Read more about it at "Introducing the OCLC Research Library Partnership" and "OCLC Research Library Partnership Frequently Asked Questions."

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Prototype WorldCat Local User interface for HathiTrust Digital Library

OCLC and the HathiTrust have created a prototype WorldCat Local user interface for HathiTrust Digital Library.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The WorldCat Local prototype (http://hathitrust.worldcat.org) for the HathiTrust Digital Library was designed and implemented by both organizations in close cooperation as a means to further develop a shared digital library infrastructure. The WorldCat Local interface for the HathiTrust Digital Library is based on the WorldCat database, and will run along with the current HathiTrust catalog during the prototype testing period.

As a digital repository for the nation's great research libraries, the HathiTrust Digital Library brings together the massive digitized collections of partner institutions. HathiTrust offers libraries a means to archive and provide access to their digital content, whether scanned volumes, special collections, or born-digital materials. The representation of these resources in digital form offers expanded opportunities for innovative use in research, teaching and learning.

OCLC and HathiTrust have been working together to increase online visibility and accessibility of the digital collections by creating WorldCat records describing the content and linking to the collections via WorldCat.org and WorldCat Local. The creation of the unique public interface through WorldCat Local is the next step to offer enhanced access to this vital collection.

"HathiTrust benefits greatly from this partnership in that the collaborative development has enabled the creation of a new means of discovering HathiTrust holdings while simultaneously integrating these holdings into the larger world of library holdings made discoverable by OCLC," said John Wilkin, Executive Director of the HathiTrust.

HathiTrust Digital Library records are discoverable through the separate WorldCat Local interface, as well as through WorldCat.org.

"OCLC and the HathiTrust have been working together closely in this shared development project to facilitate access to these valuable digital materials," said Chip Nilges, OCLC Vice President, Business Development. "This collaboration leverages OCLC's extensive work in the area of resource discovery with the HathiTrust's considerable expertise and infrastructure with respect to the preservation of scholarly resources."

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Cloud-Sourcing Research Collections: Managing Print in the Mass-Digitized Library Environment

OCLC has released Cloud-Sourcing Research Collections: Managing Print in the Mass-Digitized Library Environment.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The objective of the project was to examine the feasibility of outsourcing management of low-use print books held in academic libraries to shared service providers, including large-scale print and digital repositories. The study assessed the opportunity for library space saving and cost avoidance through the systematic and intentional outsourcing of local management operations for digitized books to shared service providers and progressive downsizing of local print collections in favor of negotiated access to the digitized corpus and regionally consolidated print inventory.

Some of the findings from the project that are detailed in the report include:

  • There is sufficient material in the mass-digitized library collection managed by the HathiTrust to duplicate a sizeable (and growing) portion of virtually any academic library in the United States, and there is adequate duplication between the shared digital repository and large-scale print storage facilities to enable a great number of academic libraries to reconsider their local print management operations.
  • The combination of a relatively small number of potential shared print providers, including the US Library of Congress, was sufficient to achieve more than 70% coverage of the digitized book collection, suggesting that shared service may not require a very large network of providers.
  • Substantial library space savings and cost avoidance could be achieved if academic institutions outsourced management of redundant low-use inventory to shared service providers.
  • Academic library directors can have a positive and profound impact on the future of academic print collections by adopting and implementing a deliberate strategy to build and sustain regional print service centers that can reduce the total cost of library preservation and access.

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OCLC’s Web-Scale Library Management Services Available to Early Adopters on 7/1/10

Early adopters will be able to implement OCLC's Web-Scale Library Management Services starting on 7/1/10.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Beginning July 1, OCLC will work with libraries that are interested and prepared to implement Web-based services for acquisitions and circulation. This will be followed by successive updates for subscription and license management, and cooperative intelligence—analysis and recommendations based on statistics and workflow evaluation among participating libraries. The cloud computing environment and agile development methodology will facilitate incremental updates while minimizing impact to library operations.

Faced with scarce resources, disparate systems and local maintenance issues during a time when demand for library services has never been higher, OCLC members have made it clear that new, innovative responses are needed to meet these challenges. For the past eight months, OCLC has worked with an Advisory Council and six libraries and library groups as pilots for Web-scale management services. These groups have provided advice to OCLC on an overall direction, offered new ideas that were not in the original development plan, and validated strategic positioning for the service. . . .

OCLC Web-scale Management Services offer a next-generation choice for traditional, back-office operations. Moving these functions to the Web alongside cataloging and discovery activities allows libraries to lower the total cost of ownership for management services, automate critical operations, reduce support costs and free resources for high-priority services. It will also allow libraries and industry partners to develop unique and innovative workflow solutions that can then be shared across the profession.

"OCLC is extending our well established metadata management, resource sharing and discovery services to include the back-office management components of acquisitions and circulation which will allow libraries to extend their use of WorldCat for full library management functions and improved workflow,” said Andrew Pace, Executive Director, OCLC Networked Library Services. “This is a natural extension of OCLC’s mission to help libraries share costs and extend the power of cooperation."

OCLC Releases "WorldCat Rights and Responsibilities for the OCLC Cooperative"

OCLC has released "WorldCat Rights and Responsibilities for the OCLC Cooperative." It will be effective August 1, 2010.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The new policy outlines the rights and responsibilities associated with stewardship of the WorldCat bibliographic and holdings database by and for the OCLC cooperative, including the use and exchange of OCLC member-contributed data comprising WorldCat.

The policy was drafted by the Record Use Policy Council, a group of 12 library leaders charged by the OCLC Board of Trustees to craft a replacement for the Guidelines for Use and Transfer of OCLC Derived Records, which was developed in 1987.

In April 2010, the Record Use Policy Council submitted to the library community and to the OCLC Board a draft policy that began a two-month period of community review and discussion. More than 275 comments were gathered via e-mail, phone, meetings and letters, in an online forum, and by monitoring blogs, listservs, and Twitter. At the end of May, community input was incorporated and a policy statement was submitted to the OCLC Board, which approved the revised document during its June meeting.

"We decided to emphasize a code of good practice for members of the cooperative, based on shared values, trust and reciprocity," said Jennifer Younger, Co-Chair of the Record Use Policy Council, President-Elect, OCLC Global Council and Chair, Board of Directors, Catholic Research Resources Alliance. "The focus of the new policy is on member rights and responsibilities—instead of data ownership issues, detailed provisions or restrictions—with the general aim of fostering innovation in our ever-changing information landscape."

The policy is based on the premise that OCLC members value WorldCat as a comprehensive, timely, and accurate reflection of the consolidated holdings of those members. The policy's intent is to encourage the widespread use of WorldCat bibliographic data while also supporting the ongoing and long-term sustainability and utility of WorldCat and of WorldCat-based services such as resource sharing, cataloging, and discovery.

"The new policy supports library choice in a hybrid environment of metadata types and content standards,” said Barbara Gubbin, Co-Chair of the Record Use Policy Council and Director, Jacksonville (Florida) Public Library. "It recognizes as essential the need for OCLC members to share and reuse their data with many partners, across many systems, sites, and applications."

The Record Use Policy Council was named in September 2009 to develop this new policy by providing a broad and inclusive set of perspectives and experiences, determining the current and future information needs of the library community, and gathering and including feedback from the library community.

OCLC Releases MARCView and MARConvert as Open Source Software

OCLC has released MARCView and MARConvert as open source software.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

OCLC and Systems Planning are pleased to announce the donation of MARCView and MARConvert to OCLC, and OCLC’s release of MARCView and MARConvert as open source software under the Apache 2.0 license.

MARCView and MARConvert software, developed by Systems Planning of Bethesda, Maryland, USA, are widely-used applications designed to assist librarians and developers working with MARC records. MARCView provides a user-friendly interface to navigate and display individual MARC, MARCXML and UNIMARC records. MARConvert™ supports the conversion of bibliographic or authority records into or out of MARC21, UNIMARC or MARCXML and can also convert MARC records from one character set to another.

The Digital Information Seeker: Report of the Findings from Selected OCLC, RIN, and JISC User Behaviour Projects

JISC has released The Digital Information Seeker: Report of the Findings from Selected OCLC, RIN, and JISC User Behaviour Projects.

Here's an excerpt:

There are numerous user studies published in the literature and available on the web. There are studies that specifically address the behaviours of scholars while others identify the behaviours of the general public. Some studies address the information-seeking behaviours of scholars within specific disciplines while others identify the behaviours of scholars of multiple disciplines. There are studies that only address undergraduate, graduate, or post graduate students or compare these individual groups' information seeking behaviours to those of scholars. Still other studies address the behaviors of young adults. . .

In the interest of analyzing and synthesizing several user behaviour studies conducted in the US and the UK twelve studies were identified. These twelve selected studies were commissioned and/or supported by non- profit organizations and government agencies; therefore, they have little dependence upon the outcomes of the studies. The studies were reviewed by two researchers who analyzed the findings, compared their analyses, and identified the overlapping and contradictory findings. This report is not intended to be the definitive work on user behaviour studies, but rather to provide a synthesized document to make it easier for information professionals to better understand the information-seeking behaviours of the libraries' intended users and to review the issues associated with the development of information services and systems that will best meet these users' needs.

Read more about it at the JISC announcement.

OCLC Adds Records for Google Books Library Project and HathiTrust Digital Library to WorldCat

OCLC is adding bibliographic records for digitized works from the Google Books Library Project and the HathiTrust Digital Library to WorldCat.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

OCLC is working with libraries, Google and the HathiTrust to derive new MARC records that represent these digital collections based on the rich collection of print records contributed to WorldCat by the OCLC membership over the last 40 years. Searchers will begin seeing these records in WorldCat immediately. OCLC will continue to add records for these collections to WorldCat on an ongoing basis.

WorldCat searchers will be able to locate digitized books from these collections and link to the associated book landing page, and in some cases can access the full text of eBooks available through these significant initiatives.

"As part of its mission to make the world's information universally accessible and useful, Google is excited to be surfacing its digitized books through WorldCat," said Jon Orwant, Engineering Manager, Google Books. "We've scanned over 12 million books to date, and look forward to the time when every book in the world is discoverable online. Our partnership with OCLC is an important step toward that goal."

"HathiTrust is enthusiastic about the partnership with OCLC to build our catalog," said John Wilkin, Executive Director of the HathiTrust. "Simultaneously, HathiTrust is striving for greater comprehensiveness in its digital collection, while increasing our attention to coordinating the building of the digital collection with management of our associated print collections. The ability to situate our holdings in the world's most comprehensive and reliable catalog of library materials is a tremendous boon in those endeavors."

As a digital repository for the nation's great research libraries, the HathiTrust Digital Library brings together the immense collections of partner institutions. HathiTrust was conceived as a collaboration of the 13 universities of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation and the University of California system to establish a repository for these universities to archive and share their digitized collections. More about HathiTrust is at www.hathitrust.org/.

OCLC and the HathiTrust are working together to implement a public interface for the HathiTrust catalog through a WorldCat Local interface, to be introduced later this year.

OCLC Makes New OAIster Interfaces Available

OCLC has made basic and advanced OAIster search interfaces available. Access is free.

OAIster is a database of over 23 million records from OAI-PMH-compliant digital repositories, which was originally developed by the University of Michigan Library. Initially, OCLC made OAIster available only as part of WorldCat and as a FirstSearch database (these access points remain). (Thanks to ResourceShelf.)

Read more about it at "OCLC Makes OAIster Records Available through WorldCat.org," "OCLC makes OAIster Records Available through WorldCat.org to Ensure Long-Term Public Access to Digital Resources," and "University of Michigan and OCLC Form Partnership to Ensure Long-Term Access to OAIster Database."

Catalyzing Collaboration: Seven New York City Libraries

OCLC Research has released Catalyzing Collaboration: Seven New York City Libraries.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

This report provides a record of the collaboration discussions between seven institutions and includes the resulting interactions, methodology, content and recommendations.

The discussions were facilitated by OCLC Research Program Officers Günter Waibel and Dennis Massie. Participants in this effort agreed that the record of these interactions might be useful to other libraries that are striving to collaborate. Participating libraries, all RLG Partnership institutions, included Brooklyn Museum Library, Columbia University Libraries, Frick Art Reference Library, Metropolitan Museum of Art Thomas J. Watson Library, Museum of Modern Art Library, New York Public Library and New York University Libraries.

OCLC to Offer Free OAIster-Only Database View in 2010 to Complement Integrated WorldCat Access

The transfer of the OAIster database to OCLC's WorldCat is now complete, and OCLC will offer a free OAIster-only database view in 2010 to complement integrated WorldCat Access.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The University of Michigan and OCLC today announced that they have successfully transitioned the OAIster database to OCLC to ensure continued public access to open-archive collections, and to expand the visibility of these collections to millions of information seekers through OCLC services.

OAIster records are now fully accessible through WorldCat.org, and will be included in WorldCat.org search results along with records from thousands of libraries worldwide that add their holdings to WorldCat. OCLC plans to release a freely accessible, discrete view of the OAIster records in January 2010 through a URL specific to OAIster. OAIster records will also continue to be available on the OCLC FirstSearch service to Base Package subscribers, providing another valuable access point for this rich database and a complement to other FirstSearch databases. OCLC will continue to develop and enhance access to open archive content.

"Adding records for open archive collections is a natural complement to WorldCat and will drive discovery and access of these collections for a broader community of scholars," said Chip Nilges, OCLC Vice President, Business Development. "OCLC is committed to building on the success of OAIster by identifying open archive collections of interest to researchers and libraries, and ensuring that open archive collections will be freely discoverable and accessible to information seekers worldwide."

"Integration of OAIster inside WorldCat.org is the result of many years of looking for a better home for OAIster, where its resources can be searched alongside other valuable, scholarly resources," said Kat Hagedorn, OAIster/Metadata Harvesting Librarian at the University of Michigan. "I am eagerly looking forward to its increased usefulness in the world of search and discovery."

OAIster is a union catalog of digital resources hosted at the University of Michigan since 2002. Launched with grant support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, OAIster was developed to test the feasibility of building a portal to open archive collections using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). OAIster has grown to become one of the world's largest aggregations of records pointing to open archive collections with more than 23 million records contributed by over 1,100 organizations worldwide.

"The University of Michigan approached OCLC about managing future operations for the OAIster project to ensure its long-term viability," said John Wilkin, Associate University Librarian, University of Michigan Library, when the partnership was announced earlier this year. "OCLC plays a pivotal role in the business of metadata creation and distribution. Situating OAIster with OCLC helps to create an increasingly comprehensive discovery resource for users."

OCLC plans to release a freely accessible, discrete view of the OAIster database in 2010 that will be updated regularly. This will allow WorldCat.org searchers to view only items harvested through OAIster.

"OCLC has been very responsive to issues and needs brought up by the OAI community," said Ms. Hagedorn. "The creation of a free, separately accessible view of OAIster within OCLC is an example of their recognition of the value of OAIster in the world of metadata management."

Now that all OAIster records are accessible through WorldCat.org, the oaister.org Web site has been redirected to a new OAIster Web site at OCLC. For more information, visit the new OAIster Web site.