OCLC Launches the WorldShare Platform

OCLC, together with OCLC Global Council and members, is taking the cooperative’s ongoing strategy to help libraries operate and innovate at Webscale to a much broader level with the introduction of OCLC WorldShare, a new platform and a new brand that signals OCLC’s commitment to greater collaboration in library service delivery.

OCLC is launching the OCLC WorldShare Platform, which will enable library developers, partners and other organizations to create, configure and share a wide range of applications that deliver new functionality and value for libraries and their users.

The OCLC WorldShare Platform facilitates collaboration and app-sharing across the library community, so that libraries can combine library-built applications, partner-built applications and OCLC-built applications. This enables the benefits of each single solution to be shared broadly throughout the library community.

Over time, OCLC will bring together additional OCLC services and applications under the OCLC WorldShare name, including resource sharing, consortial borrowing, metadata management and additional applications. OCLC’s currently deployed library management solutions will continue to be maintained and enhanced in line with libraries’ ongoing requirements under their current brand names.

Much of the thinking that led to this came from the Libraries at Webscale OCLC discussion document.

From the report: Libraries at Webscale [Download from OCLC Reports]

The Web changed our ability to scope both our thinking and our actions. We are no longer limited to simply thinking globally and acting locally. We now have the capacity to think and act both globally and locally, and to do so simultaneously. Barriers have been lifted on how we can communicate, conduct commerce, conduct research, share data, create communities and deliver products.

Leaders can now apply the dimensions of geography and scope to almost every decision they make. Their organizations can tap into tools and resources, and serve communities and markets that are global, national, regional, local—and even personal.

In short, the Web scales.

The discussion document covers these topics:

• The future is personalized
• Creating and consuming a universe of content
• In a flat world, there is one road to success
• Three key challenges facing higher education and policymakers
• Big data
• Parabiosis and particularism: Redefining the 21st century collection
• Big innovation requires big collaboration
• Creating collective impact—tomorrow’s strategy for successful nonprofits
• The shape of clouds: definitions and distinctions
• Future challenges and opportunities for libraries

For more insight and information on this topic, read OCLC WorldShare Platform: OCLC Brands and Strengthens Its Webscale Strategy by Marshall Breeding.