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Unit 15: Promoters of Library and Information Services

Notes
& Research Libraries News, Art Libraries Journal, and National Education Association
Newsletter. The most recent publications are displayed first, and all archived
resources, starting in 1970, are also available.

2. Membership Reports: A number of significant reports on topics ranging from virtual
reference in libraries to perceptions about library funding.
3. Newsletters: Current and archived newsletters for the library and archive
community.
4. Presentations: Presentations from both guest speakers and OCLC research from
conferences, webcasts, and other events. The presentations are organized into five
categories: Conference presentations, Dewey presentations, Distinguished Seminar
Series, Guest presentations, and Research staff presentations
Advocacy
Advocacy has been a part of OCLC’s mission since its founding in 1967. OCLC staff members
meet and work regularly with library leaders, information professionals, researchers,
entrepreneurs, political leaders, trustees, students and patrons to advocate “advancing
research, scholarship, education, community development, information access, and global
cooperation.”
OCLC’s most recent advocacy campaign, “Geek the Library,” highlights the vital role of
public libraries in the current challenging environment. One goal of this community-
based public awareness campaign is to increase local library support by encouraging the
public to share what they ‘geek’, using the word as a verb. The idea is that every person has
a passion that they ‘geek’ from modern art to chemical engineering, and that the library
supports all of the passions in the community. The campaign, funded by a grant from the
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, uses a strategy based on the findings of the 2008 OCLC
report, “From Awareness to Funding: A study of library support in America.”
Other past advocacy campaigns have focused on sharing the knowledge gained from
library and information research. Such projects have included communities such as the
Society of American Archivists, the Open Archives Initiative, the Institute for Museum
and Library Services, the International Organization for Standardization, the National
Information Standards Organization, the World Wide Web Consortium, the Internet
Engineering Task Force, and Internet. One of the most successful contributions to this
effort was the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, “an open forum of libraries, archives,
museums, technology organization, and software companies who work together to develop
interoperable online metadata standards that support a broad range of purposes and
business models.”

OCLC host symposiums biannually at conferences of the American Library Association
with the specific purpose of exploring and presenting how innovation in industry trends,
technology developments, and social change events will impact libraries.
In the past, OCLC’s advertising spending used to focus on promoting its services to libraries.
Now, however, the advertising has shifted to materials to advocate and market library
services to communities they serve. These advertising and marketing programs increase
libraries’ visibility and viability.

OCLC partnered with search engine providers in 2003 in order to advocate for libraries
and share information across the broadest possible Internet landscape. Google, Yahoo!,
and Ask.com have all collaborated with OCLC in order to make the WorldCat records
searchable through those search engines.
Contd....

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