1. OCLC Research Library Partnership: Overview & Opportunities
Chela Scott Weber, Senior Program Officer, OCLC Research
Independent Research Library Association Annual Directors’ Meeting
16 May 2019, Richmond, VA

2. Thank you for having me here today

3. Research Library Partnership
Applied Research
User Research
OCLC
Research

4. And the opportunity to engage directly with OCLC Research
The Research Library Partnership is a program of the Research Division of OCLC
It provides a unique transnational collaborative network of peers to address common issues
And the opportunity to engage directly with OCLC Research

5. People are connections to knowledge
Peer to Peer collaborative learning
Strategic thinking to practical application
Influence service design & future research
Shared understanding for faster innovation
OCLC Research Library Partnership: A network to scale learning and innovation

6. Areas of Focus Research Support & Information Management
Special Collections & Archives
Resource Sharing / Collective Collections
Metadata

7. Archives, Special, and Distinctive Collections
OCLC Research has a long history of work in the area of archives, special, and distinctive collections in research libraries. We work in special collections because they are an important sight of knowledge creation, made possible by library’s commitment to the stewardship of their distinctive collections. The unique nature of material in special collections can make scaling a challenge, and we work to identify areas of common need and patterns of innovation to help libraries scale learning and expertise with these collections.

8. Special Collections & Archives:
In 2009, OCLC Research undertook a detailed survey of over 275 archives and special collections in research and academic libraries. That work, and the and resulting paper by Jackie Dooley, Taking Our Pulse, helped to shape the work OCLC Research and the RLP did for years to come – including a broad range of work centering on how to make special collections more accessible, and a series on demystifying working with born-digital collections. The agenda was, in many ways, a follow up to Taking Our Pulse, we wanted to pause and reflect on what still held true from that work, what issues had largely been addressed, and what new challenges and opportunities had emerged– so that in order to help us think about where we should be placing time and effort of OCLC Research with regard to archives, special, and distinctive collections.
oc.lc/rlp-agenda

9. Overarching Themes Structural and Organizational Positioning
Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Accessibility
Appraisal
Access to Collections
Data and Systems

10. Areas of Investigation
Convergence of Special Collections
& the Research Library

11. Action: SHARES for Special Collections
Surveyed SHARES partners to learn about current practice.
Developing protocols and practices for sharing special collections among SHARES partners.
Building upon 2013 OCLC Research report Tiers for Fears, 2012 ACRL RBMS guidelines, and a recent Big Ten initiative on sharing special collections

12. Areas of Investigation
Advocating for
Archives & Special Collections
Advocating for Archives and Special Collections
Running through the agenda is a discussion of re-conceptualizing the value of archives and special collections in the research library, and this area of investigation centers around what might be needed to increase our capacity to communicate that value and advocate for the resources to support our programs.
While there has been much lip service to the value of special collections in distinguishing the research library, that hasn’t consistently translated to resources for special collections. The agenda recognizes that the heavy reliance on soft monies in special collections can mask ongoing need, and soft monies are often used for both ongoing operational need and to launch new new projects. It also recognizes the importance of making data-backed arguments about need and impacts.
Suggested research activities in this area address developing skills in advocacy, building data sets to back up that advocacy, and understanding the true landscape of resource allocation to special collections.
This is an area that I’m really interested in hearing from you all about, and where I think the expertise of IRLA members can benefit others. As independent institutions without the benefit of operational overhead from a larger institution, I think you are attuned to advocacy in a different way than academic colleagues.

13. Action: Data for Guidance and Advocacy
1998 / 2001

14. Areas of Investigation
Next Steps for Born-Digital
Next Steps for Born-Digital
Our 2009 survey indicated that born-digital was an emerging area of need. The agenda recognizes that born-digital collections and programs have grown exponentially in the decade since, and the needs we found in this area reflect growth from pilot to program phases.
Much early work in this area focused on capture of data from physical media, and the work necessary at the earliest stages of stewarding digital collections to ensure authenticity and preservation. Next steps must address the full array of activities that come after capture, including access, appraisal, and arrangement and description.
Similarly, many nascent electronic records programs focused on advocating for a digital archivist position. This area identifies a need from moving beyond creating a digital archivist position to building distributed models of responsibility for born-digital archival programs, as well as finding cohorts across the research library where complimentary work is happening.
Suggested research activities in this area address both the programmatic and structural challenges facing our born-digital programs.

15. oc.lc/wipwebinars Action: Highlighting Forward Thinking Work
One of the key ways we highlight the work of others is through our Works in Progress webinar series. There is lots of good work going on in born-digital realm via DLF, SAA ERS, and other communities. We want to highlight that work rather than duplicate it.
One example this year was a webinar from Thomas Padilla on Collections as Data project, to help us start to think about what computational access to collections might look like.
Collections as Data Webinar, February 2019
oc.lc/wipwebinars

16. Areas of Investigation
Addressing
Audio-Visual Collections
Addressing Audio-Visual Collections
A/V holdings continue to be a top concern in archival repositories, both because of evolving modes of scholarship in which these are increasingly valuable and sought-after sources, and because of preservation concern that many a/v formats are at or near end of life.
The volume of A/V holdings is staggering, and exceeds the ability to do preservation reformatting in many institutions. Additionally, legacy poor practice in collections management for these formats means that many a/v collections are not well enough managed or understood to make informed decisions about their care.
We’re working now to better understand needs in this area, beyond our initial conversations in the creation of the agenda.

17. Action: Assessing A/V Needs in the RLP
What challenges related to managing A/V collections would you be interested in the RLP addressing?
Selection, Appraisal, Collection Development
Incorporating into Archival Workflows
Incorporating into Digital Collection Workflows
Digitization & Preservation Reformatting
Physical Collection Management
Digital Asset Management & Preservation
Resource Allocation, Assessment, & Prioritization
We did a survey in March
Holding conversations in May
Will be looking at the landscape of work in this area and talking to allied orgs so as not to duplicate work
Still figuring out where we are best suited to work to address this need. Welcome feedback from IRLA members.

18. Evolving Systems Environments
Areas of Investigation
Evolving Systems Environments

19. What is IIIF? International Image Interoperability Framework™
An emerging web standard for sharing information about images and other media​
Simplifies and standardizes the ways in which we (our machines) ask for and consume media data

20. Deep zoom image viewer from Museo Historico Nacional in Brazil.

21. Crowd-sourced transcription tools, e.g. this one from Digirati.

22. Aggregations across repositories based on keywords or themes (from Biblissima).

23. How is OCLC involved? Member of the IIIF Consortium
Active participants in the definition & refinement of IIIF standards
Promoting IIIF through presentations & workshops
Have built support for IIIF APIs in all CONTENTdm repositories and 45M digital objects in the OCLC data centers

24. Prototype to Production and back again
IIIF is now a part of the production instance of CONTENTdm because of experimental and proof of concept work that happened in Research. And now we are working on building on that work with a next iteration of experiment combining IIIF and some of our linked data work in WikiBase. Will be looking for partner orgs to work with.
Prototype to Production and back again

25.
Aggregation across all of CONTENTdm hosted instances. This is a prototype, still very messy. But fun!
More in the WIP webinar from December

26. Areas of Investigation
Stewardship Responsibilities
& Collections Management
Stewardship Responsibilities and Collection Management
Addressing backlogs of hidden collections has been a major focus of time and energy across the profession in the last two decades. The agenda recognizes that while important work and progress have been made, backlogs of un and under-described and inaccessible collections continue to plague archives and special collections.
It also discusses backlogs as an issue not just because they impede access, but because they also impede our ability to make responsible and programmatic decisions about collection management, collection development, and resource allocation broadly, as well as impede efforts to advocate for special collections.
Suggested research activities in this area outline a variety of strategies to continue to chip away at backlogs – appraisal, building modern and extensible processing programs, re-conceptualizing accessioning, and generally looking more closely at backlogs to better understand the nature of the problem in order to better address it.

27. Action: Building Knowledge Together
Collection Building & Operational Impact Working Group
To address needs around advocacy, appraisal, and collection stewardship responsibilities, we have assembled a Collection Building and Operational Impact working group. The group is investigating how special collections repositories are approaching maintaining a balance between collection stewardship and collection building. They are working to develop a lifecycle framework for thinking about the full range of resources necessary to responsibly acquire and steward archives, special, and rare book collections, and the impact that collection acquisitions have on operational capacities, and will be developing a cost estimation tools as well as a suite of sample documentation to facilitate better communication amongst peers, decision-making for collection building, and advocacy for the necessary resources for their ongoing stewardship of those collections.

28. Areas of Investigation
Engaging the Challenges of Diversifying Our Collections
Engaging the Challenges of Diversifying our Collections
There is growing and significant interest in issues of EDI in research libraries. One of the primary ways that manifests in Archives and Special Collections, is in an interest in ensuring that our collections broadly and equitably document human experience and empower a wide public to see themselves as part of the historical record. The agenda contextualizes this as being driven by changes in cultural and historical scholarship, alongside a growing awareness of the many negative social and scholarly impacts of historical collecting patterns that largely only document those with wealth and power, and from dominant races and cultural. There is also an increasing recognition that documentation is being produced and collected outside of traditional institutions, resulting in a desire to collaborate with community archives groups working to preserve their own histories as one way to address the representative holes in our collections.
Activities in this area recognize that in order to respectfully and responsibly work with marginalized communities and those who have been working to document their own histories, research libraries need to examine and reconsider institutional and interpersonal relationships, consider power dynamics and identify methods of working that acknowledge and mitigate power imbalances.
They also seek to explore moving from a framework of stewardship to one of partnership, with a willingness to explore collaborative, consortial approaches to collection building.

29. Action: Highlighting Forward Thinking Work
YOUR
CONTENT
HERE?
This is another area where we would like to highlight good work going on across the partnership. I’ve been following along with the work APS has been doing with their indigenous and Native American collections, and would love to highlight it or other work IRLA institutions are doing in our webinar series. Please do be in touch if you have an idea for programming.
oc.lc/wipwebinars

30. Highlight Forward Thinking Work related to the Areas of Investigation
Action and Next Steps
Encourage Action From and Collaboration with Allied Organizations and Individuals
Highlight Forward Thinking Work related to the Areas of Investigation
OCLC Research Library Partnership Action
Action from and Collaborations with allied organizations
We intend for the agenda to guide OCLC Research work in this area, and we hope it will also serve to frame larger conversations and spur action across the field. We have and will continue to engage in a series of conversations with allied organizations to hear about where their priorities are, what of this work they are well-situated to lead, and how we might collaborate.
We of course will also do our own work. We’ll be keeping our eyes on work throughout the community and highlighting creative, impactful work that we think address issues surfaced in the agenda, and we will be leading projects of our own in collaboration with RLP members.

31. Join upcoming conversations on A/V needs, accessible exhibition design, or collection building and operational impact
Attend upcoming webinars or watch a past offering oc.lc/wipwebinars or offer content up your own!
Read and use the Research & Learning Agenda, and let us know what you think oc.lc/rlp-agenda
Be in touch!
Join the Primary Sources and RLP Announce lists
Get Involved:
If you are interested in keeping appraised of our work in this area, there are a number of ways for you to get involved.
Attend upcoming webinars responding to issues outlined in the Research & Learning Agenda. You can also watch a recording of any of the webinars I mentioned previously. And we draw our content from the partnership, so if you have work we can highlight, please be in touch!
If you haven’t already, read the Research & Learning Agenda. Colleagues at other institutions have been using it as a conversation and strategic planning tool, and we’re eager to hear your feedback on what within the agenda is most relevant to your program.
Be in touch! I would be happy to hear from you. As your program officers, we’re always available to be a resource to you and can help you think through a challenge or point you to resources and projects we’re aware of across the Partnership, and really, this is the most fun part of our job so we’re happy to be a resource to you if we can.
Join the Primary Sources list, where we post opportunities and events specifically related to our work on archives and special collections. You can me and I can sign you up.

32. Thank you!