Hello, and On Small Libraries

By Karen Calhoun on June 17, 2008 5:22 PM | Permalink

Hello

I'm Karen Calhoun, Vice President of WorldCat and Metadata Services at OCLC. Some OCLC colleagues and I have joined together to launch Metalogue, a new blog devoted to cataloguing and metadata topics around the world.

On Small Libraries

I often hear it said that OCLC doesn't serve small libraries; that small libraries can't afford OCLC. Recently, Deanna Marcum, in her response to the LC Working Group's report and recommendations, remarked that the Working Group "worried about small and often underfunded institutions that are unable to participate in the OCLC collaborative."

Well, I believe it is true that OCLC has historically underserved smaller libraries, so with some help from OCLC staff members I dug through a number of sources to get a clearer picture of where we are. In the process I learned that the picture is not as bleak as some who comment on the U.S. library scene have stated.

Two relatively unknown (in academic library circles) services--CatExpress and Group Services--enable access to WorldCat cataloging services at affordable levels for smaller U.S. libraries. A few facts about these two programs:

· 35% of all 9,000-plus U.S. public libraries are served by either CatExpress* or OCLC Group Services**.

· OCLC Group Services reach over 2,300 U.S. public libraries--a quarter of all U.S. publics. Of these 2,300-plus libraries, 47% fall into the small or medium size category. Using 2008 statistics from Market Data Retrieval (a provider of information about K-12, library, and related educational organizations), OCLC has defined small U.S. independent public libraries (that is, not branches) as owning less than 18,000 volumes; an annual budget below $79,000; and population served less than 4,500 people. Medium U.S. public libraries are defined as owning less than 46,000 volumes; a budget below $380,000; and population served less than 16,269.

· OCLC Group Services reach around 1,750 U.S. school libraries; of these 29% or more falls into the small or medium size category (there is a lot of missing data in the data set we are using, so 29% is a conservative estimate). Again using statistics from Market Data Retrieval, OCLC has defined small U.S. school libraries as spending $210 or less per pupil and serving school enrollments less than 316 students. Medium school libraries are defined as spending $260 or less per pupil and serving school enrollments less than 618 students.

· Through CatExpress, OCLC is serving the cataloging needs of 1,533 U.S. public and school libraries. Public and school libraries represent the majority (72%) of the CatExpress libraries.

· At the May 2008 Members Council meeting, a new initiative for small and rural libraries was announced. The Small Libraries Advisory Group, sponsored by George Needham and chaired by George Bishop, the library director for the Ovid-Elsie Schools in Michigan, will have its first meeting in July. The goal of the group is to recommend to OCLC new ways to package current services for the small library market, regardless of library type.

· The forthcoming OCLC membership report, From Awareness to Funding, is an example of OCLC's efforts to advocate for libraries of all sizes. The intent of this Gates Foundation-supported research report is to evaluate the potential of a national marketing campaign to increase public library funding in the U.S. At the May Members Council meeting, Cathy De Rosa presented an overview of the research findings, viewable by clicking on the "OCLC Study Report on Library Advocacy" link on the OCLC Members Council meeting documentation page.

Clearly, OCLC needs to make much more progress in figuring out ways to affordably serve smaller libraries in the U.S., but its accomplishments so far are not insignificant.

Even more progress needs to be made outside the U.S. A look into Outsell's "2008 Library Market Size, Share and Forecast Report" suggests that smaller libraries--especially school libraries--are important globally due to their sheer numbers. Outsell's report estimates there are 334,480 school libraries worldwide, and 67,765 public library systems. In the trends section of the report, the Outsell report's authors identified the following as one of a number of key drivers:

Multi-type library cooperation is on the rise (corporate/academic, corporate/public, school/public, etc.) ... National libraries are also expanding the scope of their missions, to include direct services to other types of libraries and to the private sector.

Along these lines, OCLC has been offering support to national libraries outside the U.S. The National Library Service of Barbados, a recent example, has a mandated responsibility to coordinate and advise the country's libraries and to produce a Barbados National Bibliography. Introduced quite recently, the Barbados Group Catalog, built by OCLC for the National Library Service, combines records from a number of Barbados' libraries. Watch for more about Barbados in a later post to this blog.

* CatExpress supports simple, inexpensive access to WorldCat MARC records for libraries needing basic copy cataloging and MARC record delivery for 250-7,000 titles per year. OCLC's annual subscription price for a small library is between $125 and $200.

**Group Services offers a single subscription price for all of a library group's desired OCLC services--including group participants with no OCLC affiliation. Any type of library group, from small cooperatives to statewide consortia, can pick and choose what they want--a group online catalog, unlimited use of OCLC resource sharing and cataloging, as well as other services like CONTENTdm or ebooks. In one group in Wisconsin, a single library's share of the subscription fee for all Wisconsin Group Services is in the neighborhood of $500 to $600 a year.

Hello, and On Small Libraries

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