Category Archives: oa.oclc

OCLC-LIBER Open Science Discussion on Citizen Science – Hanging Together

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“How is Citizen Science—the active contribution of the general public in scientific research activities—developing, and what should research library involvement look like? This final session of the OCLC/LIBER Open Science Discussion series brought together research librarians with a range of viewpoints and practical experiences of this exciting area. Together the group formed a vision of Citizen Science in an ideal future state, and identified challenges that stand in the way of achieving that.

Much progress has been made since 2018, when libraries first identified a potential role in Citizen Science. Since then, several research libraries in Europe have incorporated Citizen Science into their activities—despite the adverse impact of COVID-19—and are working with researchers. We can also see knowledge brokering taking place in this area, one valuable example being LIBER’s Citizen Science Working Group, two members of whom were present at this session. So we’re seeing some momentum for libraries within Citizen Science, though not evenly spread, across Europe….”

OCLC-LIBER Open Science Discussion on Research Integrity – Hanging Together

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“What does research integrity mean in an ideal open science ecosystem and how can libraries contribute to heighten professional ethics and standards required by open science? The sixth session of the OCLC/LIBER Open Science Discussion series brought together a small group of engaged participants focusing on these questions….”

OCLC supports libraries, researchers, educators and students with open access content through WorldCat

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“OCLC is supporting libraries, researchers, educators and students with high-quality open access content that is discoverable and freely accessible through WorldCat Discovery and WorldCat.org….

OCLC is making open content more discoverable and accessible through expanding collections and user-friendly discovery services….”

OCLC-LIBER Open Science Discussion on Metrics and Rewards – Hanging Together

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“What is the role of metrics and rewards in an ideal open science ecosystem? What are the challenges in getting there? What would collective action look like? The fourth session of the OCLC/LIBER Open Science Discussion series, which brought together a group of participants from universities and research institutes across ten different countries, focused on these questions….”

OCLC-LIBER Open Science Discussion on the FAIR Principles – Hanging Together

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“What is the ideal future vision of an open science ecosystem supporting FAIR data? What are the challenges in getting there? These were the topics of the second installment of the OCLC/LIBER discussion series on open science, which brought together an international group of participants with a shared interest in the FAIR principles. The discussion series, which runs from September 24 through November 5, illuminates key topics related to the LIBER Open Science Roadmap. Both the discussion series and the Roadmap have the mutual goal of informing research libraries as they envision their roles in an open science landscape.

The first discussion in the series addressed the topic of scholarly publishing; a summary of the discussion highlights can be found here. In the second discussion, the focus was FAIR research data. FAIR is a set of broadly articulated principles describing the foundations of “good data management”, aimed at those who produce, publish, and/or steward research data sets, and serving as a set of guideposts for leveraging the full value of research data in support of scholarly inquiry. FAIR research data – that is, data that is findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable – is seen as an important component of a broader open science ecosystem….”

OCLC-LIBER Open Science Discussion on Scholarly Publishing – Hanging Together

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“Recently OCLC Research and LIBER (the Association of European Research Libraries) hosted the first of seven small group discussions comprising the OCLC-LIBER Open Science Discussion Series. This discussion series, which takes place from 24 September through 5 November 2020, is based upon the LIBER Open Science Roadmap, and will help guide research libraries in envisioning the support infrastructure for Open Science (OS) and their roles at local, national, and global levels. I wrote about this collaborative effort between our two organizations in an earlier blog on 28 September….”

Charting a path to a more open future. . . together – Hanging Together

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“Last week, representatives from OCLC Research and LIBER (the Association of European Research Libraries) presented a webinar to kick off the OCLC-LIBER Open Science Discussion Series. This discussion series, which takes place from 24 September through 5 November 2020, is based upon the LIBER Open Science Roadmap, and will help guide research libraries in envisioning the support infrastructure for Open Science (OS) and their role at local, national, and global levels.

OCLC and LIBER had initially planned a collaborative in-person workshop to take place at the OCLC Library Futures Conference (EMEARC 2020) on March 3 in Vienna. But with COVID rapidly advancing globally at that time, the event was cancelled, and we took some time to plan a larger series of webinars and discussions. 

There are a couple of key goals for our collaboration. First of all, our organizations want to jointly offer a forum for discussion and exploration, and to collectively stimulate the exchange of ideas. But secondly, we want this activity to also inform us as we seek to identify research questions that OCLC and LIBER can collaboratively address to advance Open Science. 

The LIBER Open Science Roadmap provides an excellent, well. . . roadmap. . . for this effort. The report calls upon libraries to “advocate for Open Science locally and internationally, to support Open Science through tools and services and to expand the impact of their work through collaboration and partnerships.” …”

Wikidata, Wikibase and the library linked data ecosystem: an OCLC Research Library Partnership discussion – Hanging Together

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“n late July the OCLC Research Library Partnership convened a discussion that reflected on the current state of linked data. The discussion format was (for us) experimental — we invited participants to prepare by viewing a pre-recorded presentation, Re-envisioning the fabric of the bibliographic universe – From promise to reality* The presentation covers experiences of national and research libraries as well as OCLC’s own journey in linked data exploration. OCLC Researchers Annette Dortmund and Karen Smith-Yoshimura looked at relevant milestones in the journey from entity-based description research, prototypes, and on to actual practices, based on work that has been undertaken with library partners right up to the present day….”

Archives and Special Collections Linked Data: Navigating between Notes and Nodes

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“To extend OCLC’s work on both linked data and special collection and to respond to identified community needs, OCLC recruited 16 professionals from the Research Library Partnership to form an “Archives and Special Collections Linked Data Review Group.” This group, supported by OCLC staff, explored key areas of concern in transitioning to a linked data environment. Members of the group presented on a variety of projects to help showcase promising areas for linked data for special collections, as well as to explore areas of friction. This OCLC Research publication is a summary of findings from those discussions. 

Among the issues discussed in this publication:

Descriptive data models for special collections in linked data environments
Challenges around multilinguality
Ethical issues, community engagement
Expressing relationships and change over time
The long tail of authorities and identifiers in special collections
Sustainability….”

Exploring Canadiana: A Use Case for Wikidata – Hanging Together

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“My colleagues Jean Godby, Karen Smith-Yoshimura, and Bruce Washburn, along with a host of partners, have just released Creating Library Linked Data with Wikibase: Lessons Learned from Project Passage, a fascinating account of their experiences working with a customized instance of Wikibase to create resource descriptions in the form of linked data. In the spirit of their report, I’d like to offer a modest yet illustrative use case showing how access to the relationships and properties of the linked data in another Wikibase environment – Wikidata – smoothed the way for OCLC Research’s recent study of the Canadian presence in the published record.

Maple Leaves: Discovering Canada Through the Published Record is the latest in a series of OCLC Research studies that explore national contributions to the world’s accumulated body of published materials. A national contribution is defined as materials published in, about, and/or by the people of that country. The last category presents a special challenge: how to assemble a list of entities – people and organizations – associated with a particular country from which authors, musicians, film makers, and other creators of published works can be identified?…”