Two new OCLC Research Reports

Starting the Conversation: University-wide Research Data Management Policy, written by Senior Program Officer Ricky Erway.
The report is a call for action that summarizes the benefits of systemic data management planning and identifies the stakeholders and their concerns. It also suggests that the library proactively initiate a conversation among these stakeholders to get buy-in for a high-level, responsible data planning and management policy that is and proactive, rather than reactive, and is also supported and sustainable. The bulk of the document advocates for the library director to initiate a conversation among the stakeholders and addresses the various topics that should be discussed, and included in the resulting policy and procedures, in order to achieve maximum benefit. A checklist of issues is provided to help the discussion result in a supportable and sustainable policy.

Key highlights include:

• The benefits of funder-required data management planning should apply to all research data
• Research and Compliance Offices, IT, Academic units, the Library, and Researchers should be involved in setting policy
• An entrepreneurial person may need to get things going—why not the library director?

See the report publication announcement and overview page for more information or download the report directly [pdf].

Understanding the Collective Collection: Towards a System-wide Perspective on Library Print Collections.
This report brings together the important work OCLC has done for the community in providing a quantitative, analytic, system-wide view of library collections. This body of work has established an evidence base that has allowed and encouraged libraries to begin the shift from local provisioning of library collections and services to increased reliance on cooperative infrastructure, collective collections, shared technology platforms, and "above-the-institution" management strategies.

Key highlights include:

• Interest in shared print strategies has had several drivers: Google Books; the digital turn: changing patterns of research and learning; the opportunity costs of current use of space; efficient access to materials; and a general move to collaboration.
• The network turn is leading to changes in the focus, boundaries and value of library collections.
• Libraries and the organizations that provide services to them are devoting more attention to system-wide organization of collections—whether the "system" is a consortium, a region or a country.
• Libraries are beginning to evolve arrangements that facilitate long-term shared management of the print literature as individual libraries begin to manage down their local capacity.
• A system-wide perspective signals a real shift in emphasis.
• A range of first-ever calculations providing quantitative estimates and analyses of the system-wide collection. For example,
  • ". . . given any two Google 5 libraries—or, if the Google 5 results can be extrapolated to a larger context, given any two large research libraries—eight out of ten books in their combined collections will be unique." (p. 43)
  • ". . . post-1923 materials collectively account for more than 80 percent, or about 12.6 million, of the US-published print books in WorldCat." (p. 73)
  • "If the current growth trajectory of the HathiTrust Digital Library is sustained, we can project that more than 60% of the retrospective print collections held in ARL libraries will be duplicated in the shared digital repository by June 2014." (p. 80)
  • For ARL libraries, cost avoidance of $500,000 to $2 million per year and space savings of more than 45,000 assignable square feet could be achieved through shared print provision. (p. 81)

Downloads:

• Complete report (.pdf:68.6MB/232pp.)
• Introduction (.pdf:116KB/10pp.)

  OCLC encourages you to read the reports, share them with others, and share your feedback with them.