The recently published OCLC Research report series Research Information Management in the United States documents the RIM practices at 6 universities. A key finding is that the library is an essential stakeholder in enterprise RIM practices. Librarians possess extensive expertise in publications metadata, which is an institutional asset. The author expects research information management to be an area of increasing investment for universities for the foreseeable future, and for libraries to be valuable partners in this space.

The pandemic initiated or accelerated changes that often were executed in haste and with acknowledged and understandable imperfections. It is time to reflect on the changes that were made and assess which ones were effective. For library leaders, that means strategically transforming the library to adapt to evolving staff and community needs and expectations — moving toward a New Model Library. Twenty-nine library leaders across the globe discussed the changes to library work, collections, and engagement experiences that they believe will continue and what their visions are for the future of libraries.

Read the report.

Information literacy has become established as a core research topic in the library and information science field. This book describes this research landscape, identifying the core qualitative approaches applied in the research of information literacy and less used or innovative applications. The central aim of the book is to develop and support readers’ understanding of how information literacy research and teaching is framed, developed and produced.

LIBER (Ligue des Bibliothèques Européennes de Recherche – Association of European Research Libraries) Strategy Update was recently published. It gives an extensive overview of LIBER’s  achievements and challenges of the past year and thereafter highlights what LIBER members will deliver in the months ahead.

OCLC Research interviewed 29 library leaders from 11 countries to capture their experiences during the pandemic and understand what they envision for their libraries moving forward. This high-level briefing synthesizes findings and recommendations within the context of work experiences, collections experiences, and engagement experiences. And within each of these contexts, it identifies New Model Library transformations occurring because of four areas of impact.

Metadata in the Digital Library is a complete guide to building a digital library metadata strategy from scratch, using established metadata standards bound together by the markup language XML. The strategy laid out in this book will ensure that a digital library’s metadata will support all of its operations, be fully interoperable with others and enable its long-term preservation. It assumes no prior knowledge of metadata, XML or any of the standards that it covers. It provides both an introduction to best practices in digital library metadata and a manual for their practical implementation.

The Japanese National Diet Library announced its new vision which will set the policy for the next five years, National Diet Library Vision 2021–2025: The Digital Shift at the National Diet Library.

Seven initiatives are intended to better connect information resources with intellectual activities.

Originally presented in 2020 at the Convegno Stelline Conference (Bibliostar), this session Wikipedia and Libraries: Partnerships to reach the future highlights how OCLC has invested in partnerships with Wikimedia projects, and shares success stories from different types of institutions with a common goal of connecting communities of knowledge.

The accompanying conference paper Wikimedia and Libraries: From Vision to Practice makes an argument that libraries and Wikimedia make great partnerships that can collaborate to strengthen shared information access goals. Illustrative examples are provided from OCLC’s direct experience.

Transformative OA agreements repurpose former subscription funds to support open access publishing, enabling more research to be published openly. How can open access and open science be advanced further? An expert panel will provide important insights into future directions and opportunities for further collaboration between libraries, funders, and not-for-profit publishers, and will highlight the most effective models for driving compliance, cost restraint, diversity, and open access.

The Library of Congress announced its third release of more than 200,000 new records in its online catalog for free bulk download for research and discovery. These releases enable researchers to engage with the unparalleled and rich source metadata at the Library, inspire discovery of Library collections and provide resources to inform future discovery within the Library and data communities. The data covers a wide range of Library items including books, serials, computer files, manuscripts, cartographic materials, music, sound recordings and visual materials.  The unabridged records are easily accessible through the Library’s Selected Datasets Collection in XML and UTF8 formats. Direct access to each data set is available here. The release supports the Library’s effort to continuously expand open access to its vast collections.