Second week of my Information Management course, and I feel like I’m laying down train tracks while the train races up behind me.

I’ve been sick the last week and half, so I missed the first lecture and tutorial of my Information Discovery subject. Thank god for recorded lectures and online subject notes.

I’m still a bit under the weather, but I made it to class tonight. Which is good–this subject is bit like being in front of one of those tennis ball machines set on maximum rate of fire. Tonight was mostly a list of search tools, from Trove to Google Arts & Culture.

Somewhere in that spray WorldCat was mentioned, and the cooperative behind it, OCLC.

I hadn’t heard of OCLC before, and now I think I want to work for them.

WorldCat is a worldwide catalogue of library collections. Libraries share their catalogues with WorldCat, and users can then search the collections of libraries in their community and thousands more around the world.

OCLC is the Open Computer Library Center. In their own words: OCLC is a global library cooperative that provides shared technology services, original research and community programs for its membership and the library community at large. 

This matches perfectly with my career goal: to explore how can we use IT to improve access to library collections and services?

Some of their products include:

• OCLC WorldShare Management Services – a cloud based library services platform
• WorldCat Local – a web-scale discovery solution
• CONTENTdm – helps to make digital collections available on the Web
• VDX – a document delivery and interlending management system

They also have a Research site, which I’ll read in all that ample spare time I have these days.

First article on the list: The Library in the Life of the User: Engaging with People Where They Live and Learn. and its supplement Integrating the Library in the Life of the User: An Annotated Bibliography of Practical Ideas.

You know. On top of my assigned reading for class.

😦