Archives and Special Collections Linked Data: Navigating between Notes and Nodes (2020) by @OCLC Research, @nbputnam, @KarenS_Y, et al.

OCLC Research Archives and Special Collections Linked Data Review Group. 2020. Archives and Special Collections Linked Data: Navigating between Notes and Nodes. Dublin, OH: OCLC Research. 14 pp.  https://doi.org/10.25333/4gtz-zd88. COVID-19 Professional Reading. 

Linked data offers many possibilities for enhancing access to library and archives materials. OCLC has been a leading force in examining areas that can expand and simplify access to collections through a number of collaborative projects. See, for example, Creating Library Linked Data with Wikibase: Lessons Learned from Project Passage (2019)..

While there is significant work in expanding the use of linked data in what could be called commodity level collections, it is in the area of archives and special(ized) collections that linked data has some of the most important potential applications. 

This report from the OCLC Research Archives and Special Collections Linked Data Review Group is an important step in expanding the discussion of linked data in these areas. The group, comprised of sixteen practitioners from a wide range of collections were joined by OCLC colleagues, led by Nathan Putnam and Karen Smith-Yoshimura and including team members Merrilee Proffitt, Bruce Washburn and Chela Scott Weber, who represent some of the best applied thinking on linked data in the library world. 

As noted in the introduction:

As libraries and other cultural heritage organizations plot a course to move toward a linked data future, it is important to ensure that all collections are represented in that future. While published works represented in monographs may be relatively easy to represent in linked data, this is not the case for special collections materials (rare books, manuscripts, photographs, institutional archives, etc.) that may be unique or may have special physical characteristics that are of particular interest for study (p. 5).

Though there is much promise in linked data for archives and special collections, the report specifically outlines barriers and concerns to wide-spread implementation. Among these are:

Context trapped in narrative description

• “When descriptions for these items or collections are represented in systems that were designed primarily for bibliographic description, much valuable data is recorded in unstructured notes. In either case, it is labor intensive to extract entities and relationships from these unstructured notes. This data may be well served by linked data structures, but the number of unique cases for archival and other traditions of descriptive practice may make it difficult to move forward as a community” (p. 6);

Complex models

• Issues include trying to “Problems have arisen due to trying to model everything in the description of an item,” resistance to adopting a shared model; complex or locally derived modelts “make crosswalking into flatter linked data structures more difficult” (pp. 6-7).

High-barrier infrastructure

• “Software, data, and workflows take a lot of work to establish and often lack institutional buy-in and support” and “Lack of support from identifiers in the data, such as issues with minting identifiers and persistency” (p. 7);

Scalability

• “Can linked data standards, practices, and workflows scale? Institutions that collect and steward these materials include both large, relatively well-funded institutions and small and less well-resourced repositories. There are few successful exemplars of linked data implementation in special collections; stories that exemplify success will be necessary to build support with resource allocators and to demonstrate utility to dispersed user communities who will directly benefit from linked data efforts” (p. 7).

A few issues were discussed in more depth in the report. Specifically (pp. 7-10):

• Descriptive models do not currently service special collections

• Discursive description presents a challenge to entification

• Potential for better discovery

• Prescriptive vs. permissive data modeling

• Ethical issues and community engagement

• Challenges around multilinguality

• Sustainability

• Archival issues

• The need to express relationships and change over time

• The long tail of authorities/identifiers in special collections

I would like to focus on a few of these:

• Potential for better discovery. As noted in the report, linked data will better uncover key areas for discoverability. These include identity markers for people (e.g. gender); and geographical indicators and contact networks (e.g. who worked with who). As the report notes, “Even though linked data structures will bring significant advantages to discovery, end users will need to adapt to new ways of interacting with linked data structures.” (p. 8);

• Ethical issues and community engagement. Linked data provides many opportunities to increase access, but if the means of expanding that access remains siloed in a knowledgeable, but inherently limited group of practitioners, there is a strong danger of creating a well-linked and networked collection of silos that do not accommodate diverse terms, practices, and knowledge. As noted in the report: “This moment offers an opportunity to create pathways to disrupt our constructs of authority and to provide a space and a place for others with more expertise (researchers, community members) to contribute their knowledge. Institutions should be careful when balancing risk and opportunity for those who may be impacted” (p. 9);

• Sustainability. “To date, the majority of linked data efforts have been grant-funded or special one-off projects ... Everyone wants easy-to-use and implementable tools embedded in a sustainable infrastructure.” (p. 9). No need to add more to that statement; 

• The long tail of authorities/identifiers in special collections. Much of the value of archival and special collections is in the unique content they contain. The challenge of creating authority records and identifiers that may have a single global instance is both a workload and resource issue. Expanding this to include museum collections additionally multiplies these issues. The report comments: “How do we create and manage authorities across systems and institutions in a lighter-weight way that still can take advantage of the network? It is not possible (or desirable) to create entities for everything; instead, we should develop approaches that help to balance local versus global IDs much like NACO and local authority files do now” (p. 10).

As I noted at the start, it is possible and likely that many of the issues around linked data for current publications and widely acquired materials will be solved through the application of vendor tools and distributed description processes. The huge potential for uncovering previously hidden information in archival and special collections is where linked data will have the most impact. In conclusion, the report notes: 

Libraries are in a state of moving from experimentation to production with linked data, and it is vitally important that the needs for descriptions of special collections materials are not left behind at this critical moment (p. 11).

• Read: August 8, 2020 | Find Online

• See my complete 2020 Reading list on Goodreads.

Open Content Activities in Libraries: Same Direction, Different Trajectories (2020) by Titia van der Werf. @OCLC. COVID-19 Professional Reading

Open Content Activities in Libraries: Same Direction, Different Trajectories -- Findings from the 2018 OCLC Global Council Survey (2020) by Titia van der Werf. Dublin, OH: OCLC Research. https://doi.org/10.25333/vgmw-ba86. July 2020. 38 pages. COVID-19 Professional Reading

Open is in many ways the loadstone that the broadly defined world of the scholarly endeavor is driving towards. Whether it is in the form of repatriating to the scholarly community the thrice paid for (by academe’s unpaid authors, editors/reviewers [mostly], and libraries) research outcomes or the increasing release (with appropriate restrictions for privacy, cultural sensitivity, or locations of protected species or artifacts) by the world’s cultural and scientific institutions of collections in the public domain. Many barriers remain to removing the enclosures on the public domain or already financed research, the arc is clearly trending towards open. 

The report of a survey done in late 2018 is clear documentation from a broad spectrum of research and university libraries that open is the clear trend. With a total of 705 respondents from 82 different countries completed, or partially completed, the survey asked the meta-question of “What is the status of open access and open content in libraries across the globe?” (Forward).

As open content is important to users of all types of libraries, however, the survey included libraries of all types: national, public, special, and academic (p. 10). The report also clarifies that: 

For the purposes of the survey, open content was broadly defined as “the full range of freely available, unrestricted, online content of any kind,” acknowledging that “open” is a continuous construct (p. 10).

Focusing on the production of open content in research and university libraries, three areas stand out: 1) managing the institutional repository with open access content, 2) digitizing and making their analogue collections open (available online, in the public domain), and 3) managing their digital library with open collections (p. 8). 

Each of these areas is carefully defined and it’s best to let the report speak to the categories directly:

Producing open content

1. Advocacy and policies enabling access to open content (includes data standardization

efforts and staff training)

2. Publishing open content (i.e., the library as publisher)

3. Digitizing collections (includes efforts to clear rights and make the collections available in the public domain)

4. Data services (i.e., research data management activities)

5. Supporting authors/researchers/teachers in creating open content

6. Bibliometrics (includes measurement of research impact for the campus)

Making open content discoverable and usable

7. Supporting users/instructing/digital literacy programs

8. Selecting open content not managed by the library (includes a broad array of back-office

efforts to make externally produced open content available locally, such as linking to open content in catalogs or LibGuides and e-resource management licensing)

9. Promoting the discovery of open content (includes efforts to make open content easier to find and use, such as OA buttons)

10. Deep interactions with open content (includes the provision of services and platforms to help users interact with open content, such as APIs for text mining or data visualization tools)

11. Assessment (i.e., evaluation of the library open content activities)

Collecting and managing open content

12. Institutional repository

13. Digital collections library

14. Born-digital (legal) deposit / Web archive (p. 10-11)

Institutions surveyed were no newcomers to the various areas highlighted as important. More than three years of experience in the following areas were indicated by over 70% of respondents: 

• Institutional repositories (75%)

• Digital collections library (74%)

• Digitizing collections (72%)

• Supporting authors (71%) (p.19)

Respondents also indicated that the most mature of these technologies/programs were funded by a direct budget line item (Institutional repository  at 54% and Digital collections library at 74%, p. 21). 

The increasing focus on research data and data services is indicated in the survey. “Data services stands out as the open content activity for which the highest number of respondents (50%) report having an FTE allocation” (p. 21) and “Data services, for which 77% of respondents want to accelerate the impact” (p. 25). It should also be noted that the second highest category with an FTE allocation is bibliometrics (p. 21). This seems to indicate that the amount of data surrounding scholarly communications and related areas is a prime area for deeper analysis and creating clear metrics.

Interestingly, the flip side of data services is the response to “selecting open content not managed by the library, which only 39% want to accelerate” (p. 25). This response bears some digging into. Is the reason that the sheer amount of open content is expanding rapidly so that the manual selection process is no longer feasible or perhaps the discoverability of the open content for end-users has been so improved that, again, curating the content is neither necessary or practical.

As the report comments: 

This corresponds to the observation made above that Data services rank comparatively low among current open content activities, but highest among planned activities, while Selecting open content not managed by the library ranks much lower among planned activities. Given that both activities are rated comparatively low on successfulness, we are seeing a strong prioritization on Data services and expected growth in the future (p. 25).

An interpretation of this data is that we should expect to see more staff involved in data services and less in the more traditional area of curated lists of resources. 

The survey also digs into the relative importance of open content beyond the confines of the institutional campus. Respondents were asked to assess impact for open content in three areas: global, national/regional, and consortial. 

The top activities are somewhat self-evident: 

• Digital collections library: global (17%), national/regional (16%), consortial (16%)

• Data services: national/regional (18%), global (17%), consortial (10%)

• Publishing: global (17%), consortial (16%), national/regional (11%)

• Deep interactions with open content: global (17%), consortial (14%), national/regional (12%) (p. 27)

The clear takeaway, however, is that the impact of open collections is not limited to consortial partners or even national/regional areas. Open content is intrinsically tied to global impact.

In looking at their own open content, research and university libraries consistently rate “Discoverability of open content and Standardization of metadata are the top two research areas most relevant to their open content efforts” (p. 29). 

In summary, open content is here to stay and will continue to trend upwards:

The survey revealed widespread and growing library engagement across the full range of open content activities … They consider their open content activities as successful, and the overwhelming majority are stepping up their current activities and planning new ones. (p. 31).

COVID-19 Caveat

As with nearly all research done in the months preceding the COVID-19 pandemic, there is likelihood that the trends or outcomes originally predicted will be impacted by the still unknown long-term impacts of the pandemic. To that end the report notes: 

The survey data was collected at the end of 2018 through the beginning of 2019 and reflects a snapshot in time of a pre-COVID-19 landscape. We are seeing unprecedented initiatives to make scientific literature, findings, and datasets relating to COVID-19 available as open access to accelerate research and the development of effective medical practices and treatment. This is a huge boost for the recent trend to open research data and scientific information at scale. The importance of online access to collections has never been demonstrated so compellingly as during the pandemic. It will be interesting to see the lasting impacts of these developments on libraries’ support of open content (p. 31).

• July 29, 2020 | Find Online

• See my complete 2020 Reading list on Goodreads.

... to you Columbus, we say thank you, thank you and goodbye. We will miss you, in the fall, in the winter, in the spring, but some day we shall return. - Philip Roth

Goodbye, Columbus, both the title novella and the entire collection of stories, remains my favorite of Philip Roth's books. The constraints of the time reigned in his sometime (often times) over the top language.

I've never been to Columbus before ... well, almost, I've come to Dublin, Ohio (flying into the Columbus) for business at OCLC. This trip, coming for the International Federation of Library Associations World Library and Information Congress (IFLA WLIC 2016) -- that's a mouthful! -- inspired a re-reading of Goodbye, Columbus. 

It is also doubly interesting since Neil, the narrator and protagonist, is none other than a librarian. He never, sadly comes to Columbus (or Dublin) to visit OCLC (which wasn't yet created in the 1950's). In fact, it's actually Brenda, his summer romance's brother that is the alum of Ohio State University.

So, without delay, as I too say farewell ... Goodbye, Columbus ...

---

Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth

There were two wet triangles on the back of her tiny-collared white polo shirt, right where her wings would have been if she’d had a pair.

I felt her hand on the back of my neck and so I tugged her towards me, too violently perhaps, and slid my own hands across the side of her body and around to her back. I felt the wet spots on her shoulder blades, and beneath them, I’m sure of it, a faint fluttering, as though something stirred so deep in her breasts, so far back it could make itself felt through her shirt. It was like the fluttering of wings, tiny wings no bigger than her breasts. The smallness of the wings did not bother me—it would not take an eagle to carry me up those lousy hundred and eighty feet that make summer nights so much cooler in Short Hills than they are in Newark.

did not want to voice a word that would lift the cover and reveal that hideous emotion I always felt for her, and is the underside of love. It will not always stay the underside—but I am skipping ahead.

The stairs were an imitation of a staircase somewhere in Versailles, though in their toreador pants and sweaters these young daughters of Italian leatherworkers, Polish brewery hands, and Jewish furriers were hardly duchesses.

John McRubberbands was in his last year at Newark State Teachers College where he was studying at the Dewey Decimal System in preparation for his lifework. The library was not going to be my lifework, I knew it. Yet, there had been some talk—from Mr. Scapello, an old eunuch who had learned somehow to disguise his voice as a man’s—that when I returned from my summer vacation I would be put in charge of the Reference Room, a position that had been empty ever since that morning when Martha Winney had fallen off a high stool in the Encyclopedia Room and shattered all those frail bones that come together to form what in a woman half her age we would call the hips.

I had strange fellows at the library and, in truth, there were many hours when I never quite knew how I’d gotten there or why I stayed.

I flipped on the light at the foot of the stairs and was not surprised at the pine paneling, the bamboo furniture, the ping-pong table, and the mirrored bar that was stocked with every kind and size of glass, ice bucket, decanter, mixer, swizzle stick, shot glass, pretzel bowl—all the bacchanalian paraphernalia, plentiful, orderly, and untouched, as it can be only in the bar of a wealthy man who never entertains drinking people, who himself does not drink, who, in fact, gets a fishy look from his wife when every several months he takes a shot of schnapps before dinner.

...but then why should I worry about all that: the library wasn’t going to be my life.

“Sure. I got all the Andre Kostelanetz records ever made. You like Mantovani? I got all of him too. I like semi-classical a lot. You can hear my Columbus record if you want . . .” he dwindled off. Finally he shook my hand and left.

All I heard were bells moaning evenly and soft patriotic music behind them, and riding over it all, a deep kind of Edward R. Murrow gloomy voice: “And so goodbye, Columbus,” the voice intoned, “... goodbye, Columbus . . . goodbye . . . ”

But it was more than that: the union of Harriet and Ron reminded me that separation need not be a permanent state.

People could marry each other, even if they were young! And yet Brenda and I had never mentioned marriage, except perhaps for that night at the pool when she’d said, “When you love me, everything will be all right.” Well, I loved her, and she me, and things didn’t seem all right at all. Or was I inventing troubles again?

They looked immortal sitting there. Their hair would always stay the color they desired, their clothes the right texture and shade; in their homes they would have simple Swedish modern when that was fashionable, and if huge, ugly baroque ever came back, out would go the long, midget-legged marble coffee table and in would come Louis Quatorze. These were the goddesses, and if I were Paris I could not have been able to choose among them, so microscopic were the differences. Their fates had collapsed them into one. Only Brenda shone. Money and comfort would not erase her singleness—they hadn’t yet or had they? What was I loving, I wondered, and since I am not one to stick scalpels into myself, I wiggled my hand in the fence and allowed a tiny-nosed buck to lick my thoughts away.

we were heading through the Lincoln Tunnel, which seemed longer and fumier than ever, like Hell with tiled walls.

Now the doctor is about to wed Brenda to me, and I am not entirely certain this is all for the best. What is it I love, Lord? Why have I chosen? Who is Brenda? The race is to the swift. Should I have stopped to think?

We slept together that night, and so nervous were we about our new toy that we performed like kindergartners, or (in the language of that country) like a lousy double-play combination.

“The year, 1956. The season, fall. The place, Ohio State University . . .” Blitzkrieg! Judgment Day! The Lord had lowered his baton, and the Ohio State Glee Club were lining out the Alma Mater as if their souls depended on it. After one desperate chorus, they fell, still screaming, into bottomless oblivion, and the Voice resumed: “The leaves had begun to turn and redden on the trees. Smoky fires line Fraternity Row, as pledges rake the leaves and turn them to a misty haze. Old faces greet new ones, new faces meet old, and another year has begun . . .”

Music. Glee Club in great comeback. Then the Voice: “The place, the banks of the Olentangy. The event, Homecoming Game, 1956. The opponent, the ever dangerous Illini . . .” Roar of crowd. New voice—Bill Stern: “Illini over the ball. The snap. Linday fading to pass, he finds a receiver, he passes long long down field—and IT’S INTERCEPTED BY NUMBER 43, HERB CLARK OF OHIO STATE! Clark evades one tackler, he evades another as he comes up to midfield. Now he’s picking up blockers, he’s down to the 45, the 40, the 35—”

There was goose flesh on Ron’s veiny arms as the Voice continued. “We offer ourselves to you then, world, and come at you in search of Life. And to you, Ohio State, to you Columbus, we say thank you, thank you and goodbye. We will miss you, in the fall, in the winter, in the spring, but some day we shall return. Till then, goodbye, Ohio State, goodbye, red and white, goodbye, Columbus . . . goodbye, Columbus . . . goodbye . . .”

Not me. I sell a quality bulb. It lasts a month, five weeks, before it even flickers, then it gives you another couple days, dim maybe, but so you shouldn’t go blind. It hangs on, it’s a quality bulb. Before it even burns out you notice it’s getting darker, so you put a new one in. What people don’t like is when one minute it’s sunlight and the next dark. Let it glimmer a few days and they don’t feel so bad.

Maybe two other times in my life. To tell the truth I don’t even enjoy it. All the time I’m riding I’m watching the meter. Even the pleasures I can’t enjoy!”

Aachhh! Everything good in my life I can count on my fingers! God forbid some one should leave me a million dollars, I wouldn’t even have to take off my shoes. I got a whole other hand yet.”

How would I ever come to know her, I wondered, for as she slept I felt I knew no more of her than what I could see in a photograph. I stirred her gently and in a half-sleep she walked beside me out to the car.

What had probably happened was that he’d given up on the library and gone back to playing Willie Mays in the streets. He was better off, I thought. No sense carrying dreams of Tahiti in your head, if you can’t afford the fare.

Let’s see, what else did I do? I ate, I slept, I went to the movies, I sent broken-spined books to the bindery—I did everything I’d ever done before, but now each activity was surrounded by a fence, existed alone, and my life consisted of jumping from one fence to the next. There was no flow, for that had been Brenda.

You kept acting as if I was going to run away from you every minute. And now you’re doing it again, telling me I planted that thing on purpose.”

Suddenly, I wanted to set down my suitcase and pick up a rock and heave it right through the glass, but of course I didn’t. I simply looked at myself in the mirror the light made of the window. I was only that substance, I thought, those limbs, that face that I saw in front of me. I looked, but the outside of me gave up little information about the inside of me.

What was it inside me that had turned pursuit and clutching into love, and then turned it inside out again? What was it that had turned winning into losing, and losing—who knows—into winning?

I looked hard at the image of me, at that darkening of the glass, and then my gaze pushed through it, over the cool floor, to a broken wall of books, imperfectly shelved. I did not look very much longer, but took a train that got me into Newark just as the sun was rising on the first day of the Jewish New Year. I was back in plenty of time for work.

---

Goodbye, Columbus is a 1959 collection of fiction by the American novelist Philip Roth, comprising the title novella "Goodbye, Columbus"—which first appeared in The Paris Review—and five short stories. It was his first book and was published by Houghton Mifflin.

In addition to the title novella, set in New Jersey, Goodbye, Columbus contains the five short stories "The Conversion of the Jews," "Defender of the Faith," "Epstein," "You Can't Tell a Man by the Song He Sings," and "Eli, the Fanatic." Each story deals with the concerns of second and third-generation assimilated American Jews as they leave the ethnic ghettos of their parents and grandparents and go on to college, to white-collar professions, and to life in the suburbs. - Wikipedia

The siren call of "damned faster horse" ... or, the temptation of living with the horse-drawn bookmobile

"If I'd asked customers what they wanted, they would have said "a faster horse". - Attributed to Henry Ford

In trying to move things forward, managers and industries often find themselves hitting the wall of customers (and their own staff) who like things just as they are and have no interest in taking advantage of innovations and changes that would not just incrementally, but logarithmatically improve service/products/outcomes, etc.

When fighting these battles, the change agent often comes up against the classic problems outlined in The Innovator's Dilemma. Now, even though some of the examples and details Clayton Christensen outlined in his theory has come under some scrutiny recently (see "The Disruption Machine: What the gospel of innovation gets wrong" by Jill Lepore in The New Yorker), it's still quite clear that in broad strokes and from the 30,000 foot level, it remains valid. This is especially true when looking at industries where there truly paradigmatic shifts in technology -- as, for example in the transportation industry of Ford's time or publishing or libraries -- occurring.


Publishing
So, take Big Five publishing to start. Author Hugh Howey has done a great job of summarizing the arguments that Big Publishing, as currently configured, is trying to "make the horse faster" (primarily for their own stockholder benefit and not for authors or readers - see, for example Hachette's investor slides). Likewise, The Passive Voice blog further highlights these issues. And, lastly, in a post that the Hachette True Believers will discount, Amazon has actually laid out the situation clearly (and done the math for those who can't or refuse to do it) showing that cheaper ebooks sell more and generate more income for authors and publishers (and Amazon).

Libraries

In my own industry, libraries, the changes brought about by the interwebs and digital content creation are causing a similar "faster horse" conundrum for librarians and their customers (and, I'll add, their funders). In some ways, libraries have a bigger problem. The thing that the public most identifies (still) with libraries is books, but significant numbers of readers are moving away from print books, publishers maintain a deathgrip (broadly speaking) on ebooks. To whit, see the OCLC report:

"Library brand = books. Seventy-five percent (75%) of information consumers—across all ages—believe that libraries equal books. And that brand association is growing stronger." (Tipping Point, 2014, p.91). 

The Tipping Point report goes on in great detail on how to address some of these issues, but many of those steps are not "a faster horse" but radical rethinking of core values.

And speaking of core values, I'll also mention equally valuable OCLC report, Reordering Ranganathan: Shifting User Behaviors, Shifting Priorities. Here, the authors, Connaway and Faniel, point out that the core value of librarianship as expressed by Ranganathan in 1931 still hold value, but are in need of not just reinterpretation, but also a reordering that puts "saving the time of the reader" at the top of the list.

So, while I'm at it, I should also add the third of the recent OCLC reports that summarized and recapitulated much of the recent thinking about why libraries need to avoid the siren call of the "faster horse" and look to new possibilities. That report is The Evolving Scholarly Record (Lavoie, et al., 2014)  which posits that the content of the scholarly record that libraries have done such a good job of capturing and stewarding is changing and that if libraries wish to remain essential agents in the cycle of scholarly communication, whole new areas of collecting, service, and organization will be needed.

So the question remains, do you sit back and give administrators and customers the faster horse, or vault forward to areas that will keep the profession thriving?


OCLC Reports Cited:

• Connaway, Lynn Silipigni, and Ixchel M. Faniel. 2014. Reordering Ranganathan: Shifting User Behaviors, Shifting Priorities. Dublin, OH: OCLC Research.
• Lavoie, Brian, Eric Childress, Ricky Erway, Ixchel Faniel, Constance Malpas, Jennifer Schaffner, and Titia van der Werf. 2014. The Evolving Scholarly Record. Dublin, Ohio: OCLC Research. 
• OCLC, At a Tipping Point: Education, Learning and Libraries, 2014. Dublin, OH: OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc.

@OCLC Prez @SkipPrichard talking about three Cooperative #ALAAC14

@BryanAlexander on The Hope and the Hype of MOOCs at #ALAMW14 from @OCLC

The Hope and the Hype of MOOCs

Speaker: Bryan Alexander, Senior Fellow of NITLE; Skip Prichard (OCLC, moderator)

Panel: Anya Kamentz (Fast Company); Ray Schroeder (University of Illinois, Springfield); Audrey Watters (Hack Education); Cathy De Rosa (OCLC)

Performed a live poll of audience and webcaster audience (using text and website); most (small majority) said MOOCs were more hope than hype; most also never participated in a MOOC.

Bryan Alexander

Gave a quick overview and history of MOOCs; began roughly in 2008 in Canada, these are the cMOOCs; later, around 2010, the xMOOCs were formed at the large universities (Standford, MIT). 2012 is the start of the MOOC boom as they started to turn into a business (Udacity); NYTimes declared 2013 the year of the MOOC and now 2014 is the year of great disillusion.

• cMOOCs are more ground up; more open; rarely licensed; remixable. Still trying to figure that out; “freemium” not proven yet.
• What is the business model for MOOCs?
• CP Snow's “Two Cultures” divide is heavily played out in MOOCs; lots of work and acceptance in science, but less so in the humanities.
• cMOOCs are more ground up; more open; rarely licensed; remixable. Still trying to figure that out; “freemium” not proven yet. Coursera, Udemy; edX; Khan Academy; Uudactiy) are still looking for a model; many turning to corporate education (easier money) and many of them may crash.
• MOOCs are likely to follow the Gartner Hype Cycle curve: excitement, Trough of Disillusionment, Slope of Enlightenment; Plateau of Productivity
• MOOCs may become “Just part of life” or become MOCs (turned soley towards for profit); lastly, we may see a xMOOC / cMOOC fusion where the connective nature of cMOOCs is co-opted to make xMOOCs more interactive.

@OCLC CEO Skip Pritchard at the Americas Regional Council meeting at #ALAMW14

OCLC Americas Regional Council Business Meeting

24 January 2014

Jean Treadwell, OCLC Americas Regional Council Chair

Quick overview of the OCLC ARC council; elections are coming up for ARC officers and delegates. Council delegates are now broken into subsets (public, academic, museums and archives); voting is open from 24 January to 14 March 2014. Each OCLC member gets a vote, SIL's voting members should vote soon!

Sandy Yee, OCLC Board of Trustees Chair (Dean, Wayne State)

“Shared Governance”

Yee discussed the overall governance and management of OCLC. Pointed out that we are in times where things are changing very quickly. Libraries need to be built knowing that “the future is the platform” and to be able to make quick pivots to reflect changing needs of the library user community. Libraries must build collaborative partnerships, and seek partnerships that

Areas of responsibility for the OCLC Board:

• Leadership. Work with “new” OCLC CEO Skip Prichard on direction for OCLC
• Fiduciary. Board works for strategic allocation of OCLC resources. Oversee financial and business plans prepared by management. Does not seek profit, but aims for 2-4% contribution over revenue for reinvestment for the cooperative. OCLC seeks to maintain fees in bad times and have small increases in good years.
• Mission points.
  • Leverage cooperation and efficiences of scale;
  • Deliver services that support the ways libraries and user work (cloud, mobile, social)
  • Lead (provide leading-edge library research and promote libraries)

Skip Prichard, OCLC CEO

Has been at OCLC for about seven months; has been busy looking around the world of OCLC membership travelling to understand what is happening among all the pots OCLC is involved in. Key element remains that OCLC is here for libraries and especially member libraries.

Attended 2014 International CES this year. CES increasingly about information as well as gadgets. Prichard did a review of Issac Asimov's predictions for the 2014. (from 1964) and many of them are right on (big screen TV, self-driving cars, algae bars, etc.).

Prichard's predictions for 2014? He won't give any because he doesn't want to see them appear in his performance plan. He will share questions he's heard on his tour:

• Where is OCLC headed?
• Why is OCLC moving so slow?
• Why is OCLC moving so fast?
• Does a cooperative model work in the 21^st century?
• What is the CEO's role?

So, how will the cooperative work:

• Explore. Look at new trends through symposia, publications, and other meetings.
• Share. OCLC moving seriously into cloud solutions; cloud will provide lower IT costs and lower service delivery costs; it is all about efficiency AND effectiveness. OCLC is looking at the following steps in cloud migration: 1) create global data netword; 2) migrate services; 3) power this through global library cooperation
• Magnify. New study “Understanding the Collective Collection” (just out); Cathy De Rosa is finalizing the report on “Mooc and Libraries.” Key thing to magnify is cooperation among libraries. [short short video of OSU professor who studies coops. 1 billion people belong to coops; many things are coops that you don't know (Best Western Hotels, REI); coops are formed by people/institutions with affinities, that have a common problem, and can't find an existing market solution.

Some new suites of tools/services:

• WorldCat Discovery Services. FirstSearch and WorldCat local coming together; creates one central index of link resolvers and A-Z list. Also includes synidation services that will integrate Google, Yelp, Goodreads, etc.
• WorldShare Interlibrary Loan is currently in migration to cloud platforms
• Global Data Network. WorldCat has 2.1 billion holdings and 3.1 million records