OCLC, the world’s largest library service and research organization, is uniting all offices under one name and visual brand identity to reflect a global enterprise with a unified strategy to serve libraries worldwide.
As a result, OCLC PICA, with offices in the Netherlands, Australia, France, Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States, will be known as OCLC. By bringing together all offices under one name and identity, libraries worldwide can benefit from OCLC membership, research and an expanded portfolio around a comprehensive set of products and services.
2) New Report:
...the third in a series of reports that scan the information landscape to provide data, analyses and opinions about users' behaviors and expectations in today's networked world.
+ Web user practices and preferences on their favorite social sites
+ User attitudes about sharing and receiving information on social spaces, commercial sites and library sites
+ Information privacy; what matters and what doesn't
+ U.S. librarian social networking practices and preferences; their views on privacy, policy and social networks for libraries Direct to Full Text Report
Highlights:
* The Internet is familiar territory. Eighty-nine percent (89 percent) of respondents have been online for four years or more and nearly a quarter have been using the Internet for more than 10 years.
* The Web community has migrated from using the Internet to building it-the Internet's readers are rapidly becoming its authors.
* More than a quarter of the general public respondents currently participate on some type of social media or social networking site; half of college students use social sites.
* On social networking sites, 39 percent have shared information about a book they have read, 57 percent have shared photos/videos and 14 percent have shared self-published information.
* Over half of respondents surveyed feel their personal information on the Internet is kept as private, or more private, than it was two years ago.
* Online trust increases with usage. Seventy percent (70 percent) of social networking users indicate they always, often or sometimes trust who they communicate with on social networking sites.
* Respondents do not distinguish library Web sites as more private than other sites they are using.
* Thirteen percent (13 percent) of the public feels it is the role of the library to create a social networking site for their communities.
RS Comment: What about the other 87%? Where do libraries fit in teaching/training people to have top-notch research skills, critical information skills, media awareness skills? Do librarians still need to make decisions (collection development) on worthwhile resources? Where do libraries and librarians (off all types) fit in saving people time, effort and aggravation? Where do the resources we purchase from vendors fit it?
Access is one thing, but what about organization and preservation? Might some of these concepts be opportunities library/librarian to get are feet in the door? Where is the library (AND MORE IMPORTANTLY THE LIBRARIAN) helping people make decisions over what is good and useful socially authored/shared info versus either junk or out of date info? Oh, and what about promoting the fact that libraries and librarians exist beyond the four walls of the building? Remote databases, virtual reference, etc.?
Finally, a question. How are libraries preparing if social networking does not continue to grow as a whole or only in certain areas? A year ago it was MySpace. Today it's Facebook. Where do other services (get any LinkedIn invites lately?) fit it? Are we ready to always move to the next service. Could some (we did not say all) of this time better be used elsewhere? In other words, let's not lose focus of our core menu Technology is part of the mix and crucial to be as current with as possible but it's NOT THE ANSWER. Our skills, as info pros, many of them dating back many many years, are just as useful and important (if not more important) than ever before. They might appear in different forms but the concepts are the same. Let's make sure others realize this.
Shirl's note: As information professionals, our time and resources are sorely limited. How do we want to be "spending" them? Where can we really make a contribution? What is meaningful and what is ephemeral?
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