A brief summary of OCLC November Global Council meeting written by George Needham, Vice President, Global and Regional Councils.
OCLC Global Council met in Dublin, Ohio, from November 10 to 12, 2014. Global Council is OCLC’s only structure elected directly by members from around the world. As such, it’s the voice of the membership. The Council is composed of 48 delegates and three officers. The delegates have four primary responsibilities: to elect six of the OCLC trustees; to approve or reject any changes to the cooperative’s foundation documents; to provide OCLC with input from the field on its directions; and to act as a conduit of communications between the members and the Board and staff. The last two roles were most in evidence at this meeting.
After morning meetings of the Communications Committee, the Executive Committee, the Regional Council caucuses, and a New Delegate Orientation session, Barbara Preece, 2014-2015 President of Global Council, opened the meeting by welcoming all attending. Council then recognized and honored Glenn Patton on his pending retirement, noting his achievements on behalf of libraries throughout his long career with OCLC.
Next, Sandy Yee, Chair of the OCLC Board of Trustees, introduced four new trustees, and saluted the departing trustees. A large number of Trustees attended the opening session and stayed for all or part of the rest of the Council meeting.
Skip Prichard, OCLC’s President and CEO, focused on the variance between public perceptions of OCLC as gleaned on his listening tour and how OCLC looks from the inside. He also discussed many of the accomplishments of OCLC staff and members over the past few months, including the transition of thousands of libraries to WorldShare Resource Sharing.
Rick Schwieterman, OCLC’s Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, gave a succinct summary of OCLC’s finances, sharing FY 2014 results, the geographic sources of OCLC revenue, and the ways OCLC invests its revenue, including research and development.
Each of the Regional Council Chairs provided synopses of their activities since April. Wilbur Stolt presented a report on activities in the Americas Regional Council at the ALA meeting, and plans for the annual meeting in Chicago in January. Poul Erlandsen discussed plans for the upcoming Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) members meeting in Italy, and Srichan Chancheewa reviewed the recent Asia Pacific Regional Council members meeting in South Korea. All three Regional Council chairs discussed how OCLC is perceived by their delegations. Cendrella Habre and Bert Looper reported on the two Council task forces, Non-Latin Character Sets and Museums, Archives and Libraries respectively. Retiring OCLC Trustee Kathleen Imhoff closed the session with a report from the Membership Committee.
The agenda for Tuesday, November 11, 2014 and Wednesday, November 12, 2014 sessions was built on the three Timely Topics that Council discussed in April 2014:
- The future of the bibliographic database
- OCLC as a cooperative
- What keeps you awake at night?
From the discussions in April, three themes emerged that were to be addressed at this meeting.
Tuesday morning, Lorcan Dempsey, Vice President for Research and Chief Strategist, and Eric van Lubeek, Vice President and Managing Director for EMEA and Asia Pacific, talked about “OCLC’s Present and Future Business.” Lorcan examined the four lines of business and the strategy behind our products, while Eric addressed the challenges and opportunities in working at regional and national levels to create strong partnerships and a truly global organization.
That afternoon, Chip Nilges, Vice President for Business Development, and three of his team members talked about “How OCLC Services Improve and Expedite Library Workflows.” Suzanne Kemperman talked about the move from print materials to electronic resources. Ted Fons addressed data quality and the value add of OCLC processes, and Doug Loynes discussed the variety of partnerships in which OCLC operates.
Following both the morning and afternoon presentations, the Council broke into small groups to further explore these topics. Delegates were joined by OCLC Trustees and staff, and the summaries of these discussions will be shared in the weeks to come.
On Wednesday morning, the theme was “OCLC as a Cooperative.” Jim Michalko, Vice President for the Research Library Partnership, gave an overview of OCLC Research. He discussed the variety of topics the Research team has tackled, how they decide what to undertake, and the importance of showing the impact of the research for libraries and for OCLC. George Needham, Vice President for Global and Regional Councils, provided examples of ways in which OCLC behaves as a cooperative (ways which would not be supported in a for-profit venture) such as OCLC Research, advocacy projects like Geek the Library and WebJunction, and the IFLA/OCLC Fellows Program.
For the final small group discussion, delegates discussed what OCLC
staff should learn from the Council meeting, and how they, as delegates, could serve as better conduits of information between their colleagues and OCLC.
In the final business session, Anja Smit, the Vice President/President-Elect of Council, reported on the meeting the Finance Committee had held earlier on Wednesday, and Anne Prestamo, the Immediate Past President, called for nominations for next year’s Council Vice President/President-Elect and Board of Trustees opening. Council will elect a trustee to succeed Brian Schottlaender at its April meeting.
As the final item of business, the delegates did a quick evaluation of the meeting. The evaluation indicated that the delegates have attained a high level of understanding of OCLC’s work and its public purpose, and that they have confidence in their ability to discuss these topics with their colleagues.
Global Council will convene again April 20-22, 2015, in Dublin, Ohio.