A recurrent theme of this blog has been that networking changes the way we think about organizational boundaries. That said, there is generally not very much discussion of this issue in libraries, where the focus tends to be on individual services or applications, or on changing user behaviors. For this reason, I was interested to read Mark Dahl's presentation on cloud computing and libraries (full disclosure: I and OCLC get hat-tips).
Think of the more general case. We have seen a major shift to webscale which has reconfigured whole industries as well as individual organizations. Some obvious examples are the influence of Expedia/Orbitz/Travelocity on travel, Amazon on retail, Netflix on movie distribution, and the Web generally on newspapers and TV. Discovery is now largely a webscale activity.
At the same time the web has accelerated the vertical disintegration of firms and the sourcing of capacity with specialist providers. Think historically of payroll, or more recently of customer relationship management and SalesForce.com. A wide range of capacities may be sourced externally: think of anything from data centers, to the provision and care of plants, to education and counselling services. Companies make decisions about what their distinctive capacities are, and externalise other capacities to networks of providers and partners. And, in fact, effective supply chain management has become an important competitive factor.
These types of questions are becoming more important for libraries, even if they don't pose them in quite these terms. And they are not especially new. Historically, for example, think of two major shifts: shared cataloging/resource sharing and the move to licensed access to A&I databases and e-journals. In the former case, activity was externalised to consortial activity or to national-scale organizations, and today many organizations provide such services around the world, including OCLC. In the latter case, libraries gave up the institution-scale management of the A&I and journal resources they had collected in print form. They externalized this activity to, often commercial, third parties.
What Dahl does in this presentation is to look at the future of the library in the context of the reconfiguring potential of network services. He talks in general terms and then offers specific examples. He suggests that the library may become smaller, may shift to new service areas, and may become more creative in the work it does. What I especially like about it is that he acknowledges that organizational change is an appropriate response and then works through what this might mean in practice.
New York Public campaign: Shout it Out for the Library! 6/5/2009 3:43:00 PM | Alice LOVE this new video PSA from the New York Public: "Shout it Out for your Library!" Mario Batali, Amy Tan, Better Midler, Malcolm Gladwell, Barbara Walters and other celebs voice support for the library and reiterate the value of the public library for the community.
Also like the blocker page they have up now about supporting the library monetarily, on NYPL. It's a great way to remind people that while the library is free to use, it isn't free to maintain and run.
Having worked on previous advocacy campaigns with OCLC, I know the challenges of finding the right audience for your we-need-financial-support message. Especially with the down economy, you have to make every marketing dollar count. YouTube and Twitter are great ways to get the word out to new audiences. Using local celebrities isn't all bad, either.
As part of the process for arriving at the Smithsonian’s Web and New Media strategic plan, Michael Edson created a Wiki on which Smithsonian staff discuss their points of view in plain site of anybody who is interested in listening in. This experiment in radical transparency is in and of itself noteworthy, and so is the content which surfaces on the Wiki. Encouraged by @mpedson’s tweet, I particularly took note of two short talks arguing in favor of open access to museum content. The first paper (titled “Publish Everything!”) is by Betsy Broun (Director, Smithsonian American Art Museum); the second paper (titled “Make Content Freely Available”) is by Lauryn Guttenplan (Associate General Counsel at the Smithsonian). Both papers were presented as part of the Smithsonian 2.0 Forum on April 21, 2009. One reason why I found these notes remarkable is because those who are speaking represent the class of professional who oftentimes is perceived to be scuttling plans for making data more openly available – not in this instance!
Here are the outtakes I would have marked yellow if I had actually printed the pieces instead of saving a tree and reading online.
Publish Everything! - Betsy Broun (Director, Smithsonian American Art Museum)
I’m here today to advocate for publishing everything online. To the extent allowable by law, the Smithsonian should digitize and post online all our images and data, as well as the ideas and speculations that have accumulated in our files. We should let users help us sort and correct the information, and comment as they wish, from their own perspective.
What every expert knows […] is that knowledge is always advancing but never wholly correct. What we publish is the latest current knowledge, but tomorrow will dawn, with incriminating evidence that some of what we posted yesterday already is wrong.
[D]espite [our] good work, each year we actually lose ground, as many times more data and information is constantly coming in to our files, to remain buried there.
Why not push everything in our files online, including old outdated information and new information that hasn’t yet been validated? We’ll never have the perfect expert in every subject, but somewhere out there, that expert exists.
Bran Ferren argues that raw data is alive in all its imperfections, inviting testing and response. Authenticated data, by contrast, is more or less inert and monolithic. It commands respect but invites little interaction or questioning.
Make Content Freely Available - Lauryn Guttenplan (Associate General Counsel at the Smithsonian)
Position: We are a public entity and non-profit and we should make our content freely available to the extent we can.
It’s ironic, I think, that a lawyer – the one person most likely to tell you all the reasons you can’t give away content freely – is here to advocate this position, but my views on this issue have changed over the past 18 months […].
[The] Digital Media Use Working Group conducted a survey of SI staff. Over 600 of you responded and 91% agreed that digital assets should be available, and 84% said there should be unrestricted access for educational and non-commercial use.
[W]hat about the vast amounts of content that we can make available but choose to restrict because we want to use it exclusively or because a third party wants to use it for commercial purposes? In the survey, over 70% of you opposed making our content available for commercial purposes.
The Powerhouse Museum in Australia recently experimented with an open source initiative and, not only did they not lose licensing revenue, early statistics have shown that open access actually drove sales upward through awareness of the collection which, in turn, generated knowledge about other museum resources.
I have come to believe that control represents the world of Smithsonian 1.0 and if we want to keep up, remain relevant, fulfill our mission and even achieve greatness, we need to let go. So let’s control our destiny, as Secretary Clough said earlier, not our content.
I encourage you to explore the discussions on this Wiki, and follow the Smithsonian as they negotiate pressing issues facing not just museums, but cultural heritage institutions across the LAM spectrum.
OCLC Research just completed a symposium on user studies for the RLG Partnership. The symposium, Hearing Voices, was held at The Boston Public Library and had a good roster of presentations that will soon be available on the website. A very full range of user studies in which libraries and archives invest was represented - understanding different age-based information and learning behaviors (Screenagers), shaping services for particularly important client segments (NYU graduate students), profiling the service needs of students and faculty (U of Rochester and its partners in extensible catalog project), determining the audience for a national library service (the BnF’s Gallica digital library), user testing of a catalog for selection (WorldCat Local) and user satisfaction measurement (Archival metrics toolkit).
I can’t summarize each of the presentations but I can try to convey some broad conclusions that resulted for me. One is about the relevance and repetition of users studies. The other is about the role of social and collaborative tools in the library environment.
In her opening statement, my colleague, Merrilee Proffitt, challenged the speakers and attendees to think about whether and how we can leverage the range of work that is being done at so many institutions. Can we share results? Share the data? At least share the instruments used? On those questions I observe that
user studies may be done locally but the results are relevant system-wide. Moreover the circumstances that justify local repetition are rare.
Recognizing that there may be national differences, the general conclusions that emerge from good studies ought to be adopted by others as foundations for their own local responses.
My screenagers aren’t fundamentally different from your screenagers. My graduate students aren’t fundamentally different from your graduate students. My students and faculty don’t do their work in a fundamentally different way then yours. My clients expectations and use of a local library catalog are not fundamentally different than yours. Why would we imagine that the willingness to go beyond the first page of results in a catalog search is going to differ by institution? If we can accept that there is a system-wide relevance to these studies then we are well on the way to a shareable profile of our different client segments (academic/public, undergrad/graduate, casual user, etc.). We’re well along on having a broad foundation on which to do further work that is more closely aligned with the distinctive services and impact that the library can have.
The urge to uniqueness that leads to studies being framed as applicable only locally may partially explain why we don’t publish and share them as much as we should. The other reason seems to be some form of embarrassment at the results. If I don’t regard my students as pretty much like your students then I worry that mine don’t show as well as yours. With that premise the study may be acted on locally but unavailable to inform system-wide understanding and action.
The other themes that emerged for me from the flow of the day were around passion and 2.0 social tools. The occasionally dispiriting observations about screenagers were offset for me by Nancy Foster’s report of seeing behaviors that we associate with serious researchers in undergraduates and graduate students. She observed that all eighteen year olds will have a passion and evidence these behaviors around that passion. Most of the time, however, those passions aren’t academic.
The core characteristic of these behaviors is around people connections. Passionate undergraduates seek out the senior academics that seem to share their interest and zeal. Senior academics seek out peers who share their interests at other institutions. And so on. Web 2.0 social tools allow those connections to be made and maintained. (See some of Lorcan’s good posts on this topic here and here.) As someone in the audience said, they support the people connecting to people while libraries have been in the business of connecting people to books.
The passion around an interest dictates where the provision of social tools to build community is likely to happen successfully. In general that will be wherever I am most likely to find a concentrated audience of individuals likely to share my passion and interest. That suggests the destination for me to exercise my passion has to have a dense concentration of people who define themselves by their passion - for example, a discipline-specific website run by a scholarly society or science fiction fan club site. Alternatively the destination has to have a very, very large user base such that even if even a small number share my passion there will be a reason for me to share my interest with them - for example, the various Flickr groups or a national archives site for genealogists. The library catalog, even the aggregation of many library catalogs, is not where people expect to share their passion and their interests. They expect that the library catalog will offer up library assets (things, services, authority, trust, etc.) that they can take elsewhere in service of their interest and share it where other passionate colleagues gather.
Community does not happen in the catalog.
Our investments in catalog-based social tools should be minimal. The valence of the catalog and passion don’t make for a combination. Our investments should follow the contour of expectations. Those expectations can be understood through good user studies. Those user studies don’t have to be done locally and rarely have to be repeated. Our resources should go to structuring our assets so the passionate can take them where they are best used. And users know best where that is.
2009-05-18, A revised "Guidelines for Dublin Core Application Profiles" by Karen Coyle and Thomas Baker has been published as a DCMI Recommended Resource. Aimed at a broad audience of application profile developers, the document walks through the process of creating a simple profile, using examples to illustrate key components and metadata design principles.
2009-05-18, The DCMI Executive would like to remind organizations involved in DCMI activities of the DCMI Partnership Program. The Partnership Program is intended for organizations that want to associate themselves with DCMI and provide financial support to the activities of DCMI. Benefits include a mention of the Partner on the DCMI Web site and the use by the Partner of a DCMI Partnership Program logo on their materials. For further information see the DCMI Partnership Program page.
I’d like to also take the opportunity to welcome to the WJ fold the brand new WebJunction-British Columbia community, the first WebJunction learning community created for libraries outside the United States!
Come share your green strategies with this new group, browse other WJ Groups, and also welcome our British Columbia colleagues!
This month’s WebJunction focus is on Social Networking & Web Tools and includes 3 webinars to add to your staff learning calendar:
June 10, 2:00 Eastern: Technology Stewardship @ Your Library
Join presenter Nancy White co-author of the forthcoming book Digital Habitats: Stewarding Technology for Communities, (with Etienne Wenger and John E. Smith) for this free webinar. Nancy is recognized internationally for her research exploring online communities today, and in her work as a technology steward, designer and builder of online interaction spaces. In this webinar, Nancy will focus on librarians as community technology stewards. She will offer practical steps for you to begin to understand your community, assess the technology needs of your community, and how to select, configure, and support the online technologies your community uses.
June 16, 2:00 Eastern: Social Learning with Libraries on WebJunction
For the past six years, library staff have been using tools at WebJunction.org to connect with each other and build new skills for their work in libraries. Meanwhile, the dramatic growth of web-based technology has changed patron expectations of libraries, which means library staff have new needs as well. Join Chrystie Hill, community director at WebJunction, as she describes how WebJunction.org has evolved alongside these trends, to become an integrated ‘learning community’ that’s open, affordable, and always on. Chrystie will also present broader trends in learning and training, demonstrate how our members are using online tools to support their staff or their own professional development, and discuss with you how to shape the future of staff training and library services.
June 30, 2:00 Eastern: Bringing Web 2.0 into Academic Libraries
When the goal is to be “where they are, when they need us,” what does that require at a university library in 2009? As students, staff and faculty move their lives online, university libraries must choose whether to move with them or get left behind. But where is the value in a university library when Google is the new ready reference desk and the libraries’ resources are increasingly digitized? How does a library remain relevant in a socially networked academic world? From their perspective as, respectively, virtual reference and e-learning librarians, Amanda Clay Powers (Mississippi State Univ. Libraries) and Ellen Hampton (Baylor Univ. Libraries) will discuss how libraries can readjust and move their most important resources online—their people. By using social networks and other web-based technologies, libraries can become a value-added member of their community— both online and in person. By using these new tools, librarians can once again hover by their reference stacks with an offer to help that’s just a click away.
And while you’ve got your calendar up, add this one too: Crouching Tigers, Reading Dragons: Creating a Reading Challenge Program. On July 7, join guest presenters from Seattle and British Columbia as they share their experiences and expertise with the Global Reading Challenge/Reading Link Challenge, a program that encourages team building, reading for retention, and cooperation between school and public libraries. Using a “quiz bowl” format, the program has successfully challenged teams of young readers across the country for over a decade. The presenters will demonstrate how the program can fit into your library’s programming, regardless of size or budget; and how it can be done in one building, between public libraries and public schools, or across state or international borders. The program emphasizes books that reflect a diversity of backgrounds, and encourages 4th and 5th grade students of all reading abilities to engage in the “sport” of reading. Guest Presenters: Mary Palmer, Global Reading Challenge Coordinator, The Seattle Public Library (WA) and Ada Con, Diversity Services & Programming Coordinator, Fraser Valley Regional Library (BC).
BBC Audiobooks America now available for download through OCLC's NetLibrary 5/11/2009 3:23:00 AM | (author unknown) BBC Audiobooks America, publisher and distributor of unabridged audiobooks and radio dramatizations, is making its collection available in the United States as downloadable eAudiobooks through NetLibrary, OCLC's platform for eBooks and eAudiobooks for libraries.
OCLC, IDS Project and Atlas Systems to develop network-level solution for unmediated article resource sharing 5/15/2009 11:32:00 AM | (author unknown) OCLC is working with IDS Project staff, creators of the Article Licensing Availability Service (ALIAS), and Atlas Systems staff, creators of ILLiad and Odyssey resource sharing management systems, to use holdings data and license management tools to develop an integrated resource sharing solution for serials in any format.
OCLC Members Council discusses issues facing libraries worldwide 5/22/2009 10:26:00 AM | (author unknown) OCLC Members Council met May 17-19 in Dublin, Ohio, USA, to discuss issues facing libraries around the world, pass resolutions to implement the previously approved Global Council and three Regional Councils, and look back on 31 years of accomplishments as Members Council concluded its final meeting.
OCLC releases software suite to help museums exchange data 5/22/2009 12:03:00 PM | (author unknown) OCLC Research has released a software suite to help museums exchange object descriptions and share data, the result of a cooperative effort made possible by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to further develop infrastructure for museum data exchange.
The Canadian Subject Headings (CSH) list is the 11th controlled vocabulary to be included in the OCLC Terminologies Service, which provides access to multiple thesauri to help librarians create consistent metadata for library, museum or archive collections.
CSH is an English-language vocabulary that has been created specifically for the Canadian context, intended to align with and supplement Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). Library and Archives Canada develops and maintains this list, and uses it—along with LCSH and Université Laval’s Répertoire de vedettes-matière—to provide subject headings for bibliographic records in Canadiana, the national bibliography and in the AMICUS database. CSH is available online at Library and Archives Canada’s Web site.
OCLC is pleased to introduce the WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway in its pilot phase. The WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway provides digital collection managers with a self-service capability to harvest their collection metadata to WorldCat. The collections' metadata is then available for end users to search and discover from WorldCat.org and WorldCat Local. End users can click through to a library's local CONTENTdm server to view and use its unique digital items.
Collection managers use the Digital Collection Gateway to create profiles for their digital content metadata to be regularly harvested, uploaded and converted to WorldCat format. After harvesting, WorldCat assigns and returns an OCLC number that is added to collection metadata to support future synchronizations. This unique identifier becomes a cross-reference for digital items in WorldCat and can be used for search and reference purposes.
During the pilot phase, the Digital Collection Gateway will only be accessible to selected early adopters. The Gateway is replacing the WorldCat Metadata Harvesting Program previously used by CONTENTdm collection managers to load digital content metadata to WorldCat. The WorldCat Metadata Harvesting Program is being discontinued with the introduction of the Gateway and CONTENTdm 5.1.
CONTENTdm 5.1
OCLC also is pleased to announce that CONTENTdm 5.1 is now available. CONTENTdm 5.1 introduces WorldCat Sync, a new feature that allows CONTENTdm users to register their collections with the WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway. In addition to WorldCat Sync, CONTENTdm 5.1 includes enhancements to EAD handling and indexing.
Twelve new EAD elements have been added to the metadata mapping functionality allowing libraries to create more robust metadata records for their archival finding aids. Additionally, three new alternate EAD stylesheets are available to support the display of finding aids that use the <thead> element to format the contents list section.
With CONTENTdm 5.1, incremental indexing is now supported when minor edits are made to metadata within collections, saving time by eliminating the need to completely run the index every time changes are made. Additionally performance enhancements were made to indexing so that when full indexes are run it results in faster indexing times, especially when indexing large collections.
Organizations worldwide are using CONTENTdm Digital Collection Management Software to create thousands of outstanding digital collections and to provide easy access to their unique holdings.
This month, four collections from the CONTENTdm Collection of Collections are featured on the OCLC Web site. The featured collections for June include Jazz Diplomacy: Dave Brubeck's 1958 Tour of Europe and Asia; the Arnold Clayton Watkins Collection, 1942-1945; Carnations and the Floriculture Industry; and Dissociation and Trauma Archives.
From March to May in 1958, the Dave Brubeck Quartet embarked on an ambitious tour of Europe and Asia that was sponsored by the U.S. State Department. This tour was part of a "cultural ambassador" program in which the U.S. government sent prominent American musicians abroad to promote American arts and culture during the Cold War. This digital collection consists of materials from the 1958 tour that are housed in the Brubeck Collection. It includes photographs, clippings, concert programs, and audio recordings of Brubeck's wife Lola reading the travel journal written by their ten-year-old son Darius during the tour.
This digital collection contains photographs collected by Arnold Clayton Watkins of Pittsburg, Kansas, during his service in the United States Tenth Army Air Force Photo Intelligence Detachment in World War II. Watkins was attached to the Ninth Army Air Force for most of his service. The photographs were taken in Europe and North Africa. They include images of Army Air Force personnel and activities; aerial and ground images of bombers and bombing missions of the United States Eighth and Ninth Army Air Forces; German military commanders and leaders of the National Socialist Party, including Adolf Hitler and Hermann Goering; and Benito Mussolini.
Carnations and the Floriculture Industry contains 225 items comprised of 519 images and pages (dated 1950s-1970s) selected from the archival collection of the Records of the Colorado Flower Growers Association. Current selections focus on scrapbooks and clippings, photographic material, and newsletters and press releases encompassing an array of topics such as advertising and publicity of Colorado carnations, the creation of a trademark, carnation cultivation, carnation care, carnation tinting and arrangement, activities pertaining to the Colorado Flower Growers Association, and relationships of the association with other organizations, companies, and individuals.
The University of Oregon Department of Psychology and the University of Oregon Libraries have teamed up to create an important new digital collection of ground-breaking medical and scientific literature in the field of dissociation and trauma. Dissociation and Trauma Archives contains the full text of many articles appearing in key journals published between 1862 and 1922.
OCLC announces today that it intends to retire support for EZproxy licensed software versions prior to the 5.0 release and for Solaris SPARC OS's 2.6 and 2.7, effective July 1, 2009. The current EZproxy version is 5.1C. There is no charge to upgrade to the latest version.
The 5.0 and above releases contain security enhancements, additional features for auditing and Shibboleth/Athens fixes that are unavailable in earlier versions. In addition, the administrative area in earlier versions varies widely and makes it much more challenging for libraries to troubleshoot.
"We want to make sure each EZproxy library has the best support experience possible," reflects Jim Grace, Director of OCLC Customer Support Services. "The 5.0 series is a robust version that offers improved functionality for libraries over previous versions."
OCLC encourages all EZproxy licenses to update to the latest software version to stay current with all enhancements to functionality, and can assist libraries who wish to update their licenses between now and June 30.
Alternatively, OCLC is piloting a hosted EZproxy service, and expects to move the pilot into production in 2010. Any library running an older version of the software who is interested in moving to a hosted solution, please contact ezproxy@oclc.org. (Please note additional fees will apply for hosted EZproxy.)
Tuesday, 5/19/09 - ILL Non-Referral Day 5/20/2009 10:15:33 AM | support@oclc.org (OCLC Support) Description: Due to problems with OCLC’s ISO ILL server yesterday, Tuesday, May 19 as a non-referral day for OCLC Resource Sharing. This will allow our users of ISO ILL systems additional time to respond to requests.
Librarians, developers, information managers and other Web professionals who gathered Wednesday and Thursday, 13-14 May 2009 for the second ever WorldCat Mashathon have already showed off nine new applications created during the event for library users.
The event was deemed very successful by participants and organizers alike. In an interesting twist for the audience of highly-networked informational professionals, the Mashathon reconfirmed the importance of face-to-face meetings, even in today's online environments.
"I had a great time, learned a lot and met lots of interesting people," tweets Andreas Neumann of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich, Germany. Fellow participants echoed the sentiment in similar tweets and event evaluations.
Held at the International Institute of Social History (IISH) in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, the WorldCat Mashathon attracted more than 40 participants from six countries to represent all types of libraries and cultural institutions. The goal of the event is twofold: one is to raise awareness of the WorldCat Search API and related Web Services freely available from OCLC and other library-related organizations. The equally important second goal is to help developers connect with fellow developers and other technology-minded thinkers to work on shared solutions to similar situations or challenges within their respective settings.
Outcomes of the two days typically include a range of mash-ups, apps and new creative ideas to implement in developers' home library catalogs. Examples of successful projects include:
WorldCat World Tour—an app that finds artists’ albums through the WorldCat Search API and uses a UK-based streaming music service to play the musical tracks online. (Hear the developer present on YouTube.)
WorldCat Identities widgets—4 small blocks of functionality that build on each other to turn a Dutch catalog ppn number into an OCLC number, return author names, citations and related works (subject headings) in XML and JSON. (Try the demo.)
Also available at a WorldCat Library—a new sidebar in the Wageningen UR Library Catalogue that uses the WorldCat Search API and the WorldCat Registry OpenURL Gateway to display a location-sensitive listing for other WorldCat libraries who also hold the item. (See it in action.)
The format of the Mashathon includes a mix of short prepared presentations and spontaneous small break-out groups. A mix of seasoned and early career professionals makes for a rich environment for creative innovation and fresh approaches. As one attendee explained, "There were three people in the world who had experience with combining SOLR and SRU—because of this event we were able to connect this expertise together very quickly."
Videos, photos and tweets from the event may be found at the tags #masheu09 and #mashathon on YouTube, Flickr and Twitter.
Mashathon organizers are enthusiastic about the success of the event series.
"This is such a great way to bring the library development community together," explains Roy Tennant, one of the founders of the OCLC Developer Network. "We are so pleased with the creativity of the implementations and expect the tools created these two days to continue delivering long-term value for libraries and library users around the world."
This month's enhancement includes the library profile page—populated by data in the WorldCat Registry—and the ability to customize e-mail messages sent through WorldCat.org.
Your library's profile page on WorldCat.org
Now libraries have profiles on WorldCat.org, too. Similar to the way a personal profile page gathers together your activities on WorldCat.org in a single page, now there's a page that showcases all your library's relevant information such as location, links to your catalog, Web site, virtual reference services and more.
The new Library Profile page also gives users an easy place to know what the latest items are that you've added to WorldCat—automatically. The featured items are updated once a month, and are presented by relative popularity (as determined by number of holdings in WorldCat.)
Library Profile pages will keep evolving. They are built from data in the WorldCat Registry, so you may want to check your library's Registry profile and make sure all the fields are populated and up-to-date.
We heard you, and the WorldCat permalink is back on the interface. A great way to reference materials on blogs, tweets and more, the permalink sits right above the "more like this" box. Keep linking into WorldCat to keep increasing the visibility of library materials in popular Web search engine results.
Shelf location by e-mail, a la WorldCat
WorldCat.org has long-enabled "e-mail this" functionality. Now it's even more flexible, as users can custom edit the message and even receive shelf location and availability information at the same time, if you're a WorldCat Local library.
Need a quick catch-up on all that's happened lately with WorldCat.org?
Synch up with WorldCat.org with our latest Webinar recording. You'll see a demo of all the latest features, hear how the WorldCat Mobile pilot is doing and get a quick refresher on how to update your WorldCat Registry profile.
creating a personal account and associating this with the Registry Profile
updating your details, deep linking and how the results looks in WorldCat.org
non-OCLC services linking to WorldCat Registry data
What is the WorldCat Registry?
OCLC has been long known for centralization of metadata about the world’s collections in the WorldCat catalog. But libraries are defined by much more than its collections. There is also metadata about the institution itself: its identity, electronic services, relationships, staff contacts and other pertinent data. This metadata informs the processes and systems driving entire enterprise; however, maintenance of it can become a random, unstructured and time-consuming workflow.
Patron or library staff can eventually find appropriate information about libraries by performing enough searches. But that is not always possible or feasible for machine interactions. OCLC hopes that a better solution lies in centralization of essential metadata about the libraries and consortia in the free WorldCat Registry.
WorldCat Registry was introduced as a free machine-accessible service to libraries around the world in early 2007. Our main goals for the directory include being: trusted, comprehensive, and web accessible.
Learn about the WorldCat Registry data and services that utilize it, as well as how to manage your library’s online profile information.
Sue posted an outstanding list of 
