Survey Responses Sought from the OCLC Review Board on Shared Data Creation and Stewardship

The OCLC Review Board on Shared Data Creation and Stewardship is conducting a survey to gather opinions on OCLC's proposed Policy for Use and Transfer of WorldCat Records. The survey is 6 pages long and took me about 20 minutes. After the demographic information, the survey asks about your organization's practices for acquiring and sharing cataloging data. This is followed by a series of questions stating your preference for the existing and the proposed policies, how those policies affect your organization's plans, and opinions about the roles of OCLC and WorldCat in sharing bibliographic records. You are then offered a chance to provide your contact information to the external research organization gathering the data. (The survey states that this information will not be provided to the OCLC review board.)

Here is the text of the announcement:

Dear Colleague:

As chair of the OCLC Review Board on Shared Data Creation and Stewardship, I invite you to participate in a Web-based survey among librarians and other interested constituents. The primary goal of this survey is to gather input from both OCLC members and non-members about a proposed OCLC policy, Policy for Use and Transfer of WorldCat(r) Records.

The Review Board will consider the results of this survey in its recommendations to OCLC.

Please review the existing guidelines and proposed policy if you have not already done so:

Guidelines

Proposed Policy

The OCLC Review Board is an independent committee convened by the OCLC Board of Trustees and the OCLC Members Council. If you wish to find out more about the Review Board, please visit these links:

OCLC Review Board

Press release - formation of Review Board

Press release - Review Board members

The survey is available online at the following site, where you will find specific instructions on completing the survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=c0hILWPafv97EDbNiRXXjg_3d_3d

I invite you to complete this survey yourself or forward it to a colleague with an interest in this issue. Your opinions and comments are vital to our evaluation, regardless of your current level of usage of OCLC services or your relationship to OCLC.

Please complete the questionnaire online by April 8, 2009. To protect the confidentiality of your responses, all data will be collected, tabulated, and analyzed by Linray, an independent market research consultant. We will receive data in aggregate form only; your answers will not be associated in any way with you or your organization.

If you have questions about the content of the survey, please send an e-mail to reviewboard@oclc.org. As an alternative to the survey, we welcome your feedback by sending an e-mail to reviewboard@oclc.org or posting comments at http://community.oclc.org/reviewboard/. Please feel free to provide input in the language of your choice.

Thank you for your participation in this survey.

Sincerely,

Jennifer A. Younger
Chair, OCLC Review Board of Shared Data Creation and Stewardship
Edward H. Arnold Director, Hesburgh Libraries
University of Notre Dame

The text was modified to update a link from http://www.oclc.org/worldcat/catalog/policy/board/default.htm to http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20090628150300/http://www.oclc.org/worldcat/catalog/policy/board/default.htm on February 11th, 2011.