Computers in Libraries 2014 - Day 2 - OCLC Breakfast

On Tuesday morning I attended the OCLC breakfast, where OCLC (stands for Online Computer Library Center, a nonprofit company that provides a variety of library services and plays a particularly important role in cataloging of resources and interlibrary loan) provides a rundown of various products and services they are working on.  The food a the OCLC breakfast is a little nicer than that in the conference hall and it's always interesting to hear what OCLC has going on.

This year they mentioned the following programs and products, some of which I was more interested in than others.

They recently had a symposium on MOOCs (it was titled "The Hope & Hype").  The assertion is that MOOCs are going to change change the way the library operates as libraries will be asked to support the ability of students to connect to these online courses and support them in other ways.  There is a recording of this symposium on the OCLC website.  They are also coming out with a publication on MOOCs and libraries.

They are working on an interesting project called Worldcat Identities.  This is a tool that flips the WorldCat catalog on its head so that rather than looking at what titles are owned by certain libraries, you're just looking at a combined list of everything that has been produced.  For instance you can bring up an author and see all of her works, or find out what cookbooks are out there that cover specific cuisines.  At least from the brief testing I've done of the site it seems a little buggy but the idea has potential.

They spent a lot of time talking about WorldShare Management Services, which is a cloud-based Integrated Library System that they are marketing.  They say that 225 libraries will be using it by the end of the year.  Using something like this frees libraries from a lot of the traditional problems that they have had with conventional library systems like having to keep staff clients up-to-date, making sure that the catalog server gets upgraded, and making sure that the clients are installed and configured properly wherever they are needed.  WorldShareManagement Services is all web-based and takes heavy advantage of OCLC's position as a central clearinghouse for catalog records making maintenance of a library's catalog hypothetically extremely easy.

 OCLC is just completing a shift from the older Interlibrary Loan system to a new system called WorldShare Interlibrary Loan.  There are a number of advantages to the new platform, it is required for all libraries who want to continue doing Interlibrary Loan using OCLC and it is available at no additional cost.

Of greater interest to me was a discussion of a new product called WorldCat Discovery Services.  This is another free upgrade that will eventually phase out three services currently used by the general public for searching OCLC content: FirstSearch, WorldCat.org, and WorldCat Local.  Libraries can sign up for their own new unique URL which they can customize.  The product doesn't quite have all of the features that they want it to have when it is complete, which they anticipate it being by November.  It does sound like it will be a nice upgrade though, with separate staff an patron interfaces and responsive design, among other features.  All libraries will be required to go to WorldCat Discovery Services from FirstSearch by December of 2015.