Information Trends in Libraries

Get More Value from DataGive More Value to Users

Get Users involved

July 9, 2007

Stuart WeibelSenior Research Scientist

OCLC Programs and Research

What do we mean by value?

The Library Business Model• Make information look free to end users

The SCOAP (of the Mission)• Selection• Collection• Organization• Access• Preservation

Return on (society’s) investment Return of Patrons

Value Domains

Societal• Authoritative curation of the cultural, technical,

and scientific assets of a society• Information Neutrality• Public Trust

Technical• Systems for supporting SCOAP activities

• Bookshelves• Cataloging (and catalogs)• Electronic systems

Value Domains (continued)

Social: So-called Library 2.0 approaches• Promote community engagement• Recommender Services (reader advisories)

• People who bought X, also bought Y• LibraryThing.com does this well

• Tagging – folksonomies: what value?• Public Bibliography

• What is more important for discovery and use: a book review or a MARC record?

• Linking structure among first class objects is a central feature of the Web

What is a First Class Object? An information entity that has:

• Identity on the Web• A persistent identifier

• Accessible by anyone or any application• Stands alone

• Attribution (authorship)• Intellectual property Rights are clear

• Curated (don’t leave lying around)

FRBR entities should all be First Class Objects All FRBR entities should be addressable on

the Web• Group One

• Works, expressions, manifestations, and items

• Group Two• Named entities – people, organizations

• Group three• Subjects, concepts, terms, places…

Allow the user to enter and traverse the catalog from any of these entry points

Book Reviews:Again, First Class Objects

Persistently identified – with a single naming strategy

Accessible on their own Attributable – give me credit Linked appropriately – to WorldCat

Records Curated – don’t leave them lying around

in blogs

Delivering Value from Data to the User

WorldCat Identities a case study

WorldCat Identities (beta)

Thom Hickey & Ralph LeVan, OCLC Programs and Research

20,000,000 names of people (real and fictional), organizations, and a smattering of animals (real and fictional)

Mined from OCLC records (100,000,000 records representing a billion plus of the common library holdings of OCLC’s global membership

http://orlabs.oclc.org/Identities/

WorldCat Identities: Summary Mine the data, extract value Summarize the larger context Link to all things useful

• Content (or its surrogates)• Related authors• Reviews• Authority Data

Consumer environment that is attractive, useful, shareable, and richly linked

Library Branding, Social Networking, and Web 2.0

Giving value to users where and how they want it

Where is the Library as a Brand?

Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources A Report to the OCLC Membership

3300 Respondents to questions on:• Library use • Awareness and use of library electronic

resources • The Internet search engine, the library and the

librarian • Free vs. for-fee information • The "Library" brand

The over-all picture:

Libraries are trusted sources of information Search engines are trusted about the same People care about the quantity and quality of

information they find… speed is less important They do not view paid information as more

accurate than free information The overwhelming branding image of libraries is…

BOOKS• Patrons do not think of the library as an important

source of electronic information !

Building out the library brand

Build on the trust of our patrons Build on our business model:

Making information look free to end-users Build on the scale that libraries represent

• Presence in every community• Global scope and reach

Greater awareness of library resources Make libraries a part of the new electronic

environments that dominate social, educational, and work environments

Social Networking Software

Deliver library services into the emerging social networks

Motivate people to participate• Tagging• Book Reviews• Emergent relationships that are evident

from data about what people have and like

Social Consumer environments

Social Networking is not just for games• Facebook• Myspace• Second Life• Orkut

All are flawed as service delivery models• Business models are closed• Features are rudimentary

But… they foretell our digital future

Libraries must compare favorably with experiences that our patrons expect:

Discovery and recommender services Web 2.0 social network capabilities Experiences of comparable commercial service

providers Last-mile delivery capability Bookstore social experiences

• Coffee-shop salons• People to help us navigate the intricacies of a

complicated knowledge space We are offering an experience as well as a service

The future of Library catalogs?

Evolving towards the network level Collections linked to people, organizations,

global locations, concepts, context, metadata, and social networking benefits

Fit into the flow of the work and social lives of patrons

Help create a scaffolding for past knowledge and future productivity

Connect the User to the Library

Web or Scaffolding?http://www.smart-kit.com/s291/what-spider-webs-can-teach-us-about-caffeines-effect-on-the-brain/

Web is a wonderful metaphor, but perhaps something a bit more durable?

We want more• Coherence and context• Mature, durable environments that will

help us preserve our work and fix it in the context of our culture

• Honor the long-term mission of librarianship by embedding it in the emerging technologies of a social Web

Obrigado!

Find me on the Web at… http://weibel-lines.typepad.com http://www.flickr.com/photos/weibel-lines/sets/ weibel@oclc.org