User:JulieAustad/Sandbox

History

Originally named the Ohio College Library Center, OCLC began in 1967 through a collaboration of Ohio university presidents, vice presidents, and library directors who wanted to create a cooperative, computerized network for Ohio libraries. The group first met on July 5, 1967 on the campus of Ohio State University to sign the articles of incorporation for the nonprofit organization. The group hired Frederick G. Kilgour, a former Yale University medical school librarian, to design the shared cataloging system Kilgour wished to merge the latest information storage and retrieval system of the time, the computer, with the oldest, the library. His vision of an active rather than passive system where the library would go to the people was a rather revolutionary idea for 1967. The plan was to merge the catalogs of Ohio libraries electronically through a computer network and database in order to streamline operations, control costs, and increase efficiency in library management. The goal of this network and database was to bring libraries together to cooperatively keep track of the world’s information in order to best serve researchers and scholars. The first library to do online cataloging through OCLC was the Alden Library at Ohio University on August 26, 1971. This was the first occurrence of online cataloging by any library worldwide .

Research

OCLC has been conducting research for the library community for more than 30 years. In accordance with its mission, OCLC makes its research outcomes known through various publications. These publications, including journal articles, reports, newsletters, and presentations, are available through the organization’s website.

• OCLC Publications - Research articles from various journals including, but not limited to, Code4Lib Journal, OCLC Research, Reference & User Services Quarterly, College & Research Libraries News, Art Libraries Journal, and National Education Association Newsletter. The most recent publications are displayed first, and all archived resources, starting in 1970, are also available.
• Membership Reports - A number of significant reports on topics ranging from virtual reference in libraries to perceptions about library funding.
• Newsletters – Current and archived newsletters for the library and archive community.
• Presentations – Presentations from both guest speakers and OCLC research from conferences, webcasts, and other events. The presentations are organized into five categories: Conference presentations, Dewey presentations, Distinguished Seminar Series, Guest presentations, and Research staff presentations.

Advocacy

Advocacy has been a part of OCLC’s mission since its founding in 1967. OCLC staff members meet and work regularly with library leaders, information professionals, researchers, entrepreneurs, political leaders, trustees, students and patrons to advocate “advancing research, scholarship, education, community development, information access, and global cooperation.”

OCLC’s most recent advocacy campaign, “Geek the Library,” highlights the vital role of public libraries in the current challenging environment. One goal of this community-based public awareness campaign is to increase local library support by encouraging the public to share what they ‘geek’, using the word as a verb. The idea is that every person has a passion that they ‘geek’ from modern art to chemical engineering, and that the library supports all of the passions in the community. The campaign, funded by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, uses a strategy based on the findings of the 2008 OCLC report, “From Awareness to Funding: A study of library support in America.”

Other past advocacy campaigns have focused on sharing the knowledge gained from library and information research. Such projects have included communities such as the Society of American Archivists, the Open Archives Initiative, the Institute for Museum and Library Services, the International Organization for Standardization, the National Information Standards Organization, the World Wide Web Consortium, the Internet Engineering Task Force, and Internet2. One of the most successful contributions to this effort was the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, “an open forum of libraries, archives, museums, technology organization, and software companies who work together to develop interoperable online metadata standards that support a broad range of purposes and business models.”

OCLC host symposiums biannually at conferences of the American Library Association with the specific purpose of exploring and presenting how innovation in industry trends, technology developments, and social change events will impact libraries.

In the past, OCLC’s advertising spending used to focus on promoting its services to libraries. Now, however, the advertising has shifted to materials to advocate and market library services to communities they serve. These advertising and marketing programs increase libraries’ visibility and viability.

OCLC partnered with search engine providers in 2003 in order to advocate for libraries and share information across the broadest possible Internet landscape. Google, Yahoo!, and Ask.com have all collaborated with OCLC in order to make the WorldCat records searchable through those search engines.