Monday, September 8, 2008

WorldCat Local at the U. of Washington Libraries

As a follow up to our camp this summer note that Jennifer Ward and her colleagues at the "other u-dub" now have published an ALA Technology Reports on their experiences with WorldCat Local. Here's the blurb. Use this link to learn a bit more about and order the publication:

http://www.techsource.ala.org/ltr/worldcat-local-at-the-univ-of-washington-libraries.html

Written by three UW librarians who were integral to the WorldCat Local project at UW Libraries—Jennifer Ward, Pam Mofjeld, and Steve Shadle—this LTR issue provides an overview of the UW Libraries' WorldCat Local development, usability testing methods and exercises, and implementation.

"One of the strategic directions of the University of Washington Libraries Vision 2010 Strategic plan is 'Enhance user services,'" report the authors in the Introduction of the report. "Our goal is to 'meet user needs by providing access to resources and services at the point of need an in the users' enviroments.' We strive to meet this goal through this initiative: 'Build or integrate new tools and services for information discovery and delivery.'"

As the authors also note in the Introduction, library staff knew that creating such a tool would require partnership beyond the UW Libraries.

"In the summer of 2006, the UW Libraries approached OCLC to gauge interest in a project to the discovery-to-delivery issue." And the rest is history.

In this sixth issue of Library Technology Reports in volume 44, you'll find:
  • Chapter 1: An introduction to the UW Libraries' WorldCat Local project
  • Chapter 2: A description of WorldCat Local—what it is, how it works, key features of the application, and a comparison of discovery and delivery of information before and after WorldCat Local was implemented at UW Libraries
  • Chapter 3: Information about the user experience, feedback, and testing
  • Chapter 4: Usage and Impact of WorldCat Local
  • Chapter 5: Planning and implementation documentation, including information about working with OCLC; the UW Libraries' implementation teams; circulation and interlibrary loan issues; and Web services aspects
  • Chapter 6: An overview of "working at the network level" for UW Libraries' WorldCat Local implementation
  • Chapter 7 and the appendix: A summary of the project as well as the WorldCat Local Impact Summary at the Univ. of Washington
If you have additional follow up to the camp, don't hesitate to post to the blog.

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