This has been a challenging year for the OCLC cooperative. Financially, OCLC was not immune to the effects of the worldwide economic recession. At the same time, we continued to execute our long-term strategy of building Web-scale services, setting the stage for an exciting transformation in the way libraries serve their institutions and users.
Jordan goes on to share numerous statistics about OCLC as he reviews the fiscal year. Here are just a few abridged highlights:
Participation
Total participation in the OCLC cooperative at June 30, 2009 involved 72,035 institutions in 171 countries, an increase of 2,195 institutions from the previous year.
The economic downturn notwithstanding, libraries maintained their strong use of OCLC systems and services.
They used OCLC to:
• Catalog 273.8 million items online and via batchload
• Add 30.9 million records to the WorldCat database
• Arrange 10.3 million interlibrary loans
• Perform 72.3 million end-user reference searches on the OCLC FirstSearch service
• Perform 143.1 million click-throughs from partner sites on the Web to the WorldCat.org landing page
• Add 29,633 records to WorldCat for digital objects managed by CONTENTdm.
WorldCat
In fiscal 2009, WorldCat, the OCLC bibliographic database, grew by 31 million records and 160 million location listings; this rate of growth was the fastest since WorldCat was introduced in 1971. Individual catalogers at workstations cataloged 32 million items on the OCLC system during the year.
Collective Collection
We have been extending WorldCat to represent the collective collection of the OCLC cooperative, including physical holdings such as books and journals, licensed digital content and the growing array of special collections that are being digitized. We began adding article metadata to WorldCat in 2007.We have been systematically indexing entire databases in WorldCat Local, beginning with FirstSearch databases and moving on to content that OCLC does not host, such as that provided by EBSCO and JSTOR.
Finances
Libraries’ use of OCLC services in fiscal 2009 generated cost- share revenues of $240.5 million, which was down from $246.4 million the previous year. Contribution to equity before portfolio losses was $6 million; however, realized portfolio losses of $37.2 million brought total GAAP contribution to equity to a negative $31.2 million.
Strategic Directions
Our strategic directions are focused on four areas: 1) creating a compelling user environment for our member institutions; 2) creating systemwide efficiencies in library workflow management; 3) making OCLC Web services a valued part of library operations; and 4) increasing OCLC’s global relevance and position of trust.
Next, sections on acquisitions and divestitures as well as workplace
In 2009, for the fourth straight year, OCLC was named one of ComputerWorld’s “Best Places to Work in Information Technology” in the U.S. I am pleased to report that OCLC staff across the organization are energized—they believe strongly in our mission and public purposes.
Record Use Policy
In January 2009, the OCLC Members Council and Board of Trustees jointly convened a Review Board on the Principles of Shared Data Creation and Stewardship to represent the membership and inform OCLC on the principles and best practices for sharing library data. Chaired by Jennifer Younger, Edward H. Arnold Director of Hesburgh Libraries, University of Notre Dame, and OCLC Members Council delegate, the Review Board gathered input from the library community and recommended to the Board of Trustees on June 22, 2009 that OCLC withdraw the proposed policy. Subsequently, OCLC withdrew the policy.
Governance
Throughout its history, the OCLC cooperative has been fortunate to have people in libraries and other knowledge institutions who are willing to get involved, not only in governance, but in research, in product development and testing of new services and programs.
Going Forward
Despite the current economic downturn, there is reason for optimism. While we have frozen prices and salaries for the coming year, we have not cut back on our enthusiasm. Indeed, this is an exciting time for the OCLC cooperative. Our new services—WorldCat Local and Web-scale management services—promise to further reduce costs for libraries while providing an improved experience for library users...Our public purposes of furthering access to the world’s information and reducing the rate of rise of per-unit library costs have served us well for 42 years. They have guided us through good times and bad. I believe the best is yet to come.
The rest of the report includes a month-by-month review and loads of charts, graphs and stats. Including:
+ Program Highlights
+ WorldCat Records by Format
+ Top 50 Language Distributions, WorldCat
+ Major Batchloads in FY 2009
+ A Review of Worldcat Identities Service
Eleven libraries and consortia are featured in the report.
Finally, narrative and stats about "going forward into a new era." Some of what's featured includes:
+ Average Monthly Traffic at WorldCat.org
+ A Section on WorldCat Mobile
+ OCLC Developer Network
+ Metadata services for publishers: enriching ONIX records with WorldCat metadata
+ The Virtual International Authority File
Info about the OCLC Board of Trustees; Strategic Leadership Team; Members Council
Again, these are just a few highlights to be aware of.
A family of resources to help information workers be more effective, raise the value of information in their organisations and contribute to success. Read more »
Recently I have found myself cooing over visualisation maps (and heat maps) of health and well being resources. The content rich data is overlayed with mapping technologies, and some interesting themes and patterns are emerging.
A lot of the talk around social media in the last year has been around information overload. Social media has provided us with new and exciting ways to create content. But it has also meant learning new ways to manage and engage with social media tools. Are we teetering on the edge of an information overload precipice?
Information overload is a figment of your imagination. Or a failure of your filter. Or a symptom of your technological submissiveness. Depends on who you ask.
What if you had to sort through 3.5 million articles and social media posts a day and try to pull out the most relevant items for your organisation? What if you then had to cobble it all together into something readable for your top groups and executives in your organisation?
Alacra Compliance saves time by aggregating information from both free and fee-based sources and enabling users to conduct an accurate federated search across these sources (coined “simultaneous search” by Alacra).
FreePint Family
Quilting big data threads
The fallacy of information overload
Information overload: fact, fantasy or filter failure? 
