Collection Data as Research Data: Data in your own backyard

Abstract

Interested in building data skills, but don’t feel like an “expert” in any data related field? Try looking in your own back yard. This talk introduces OCLC WorldShare Collection manager as a source of bibliographic data for research projects. Your library probably subscribes to it to manage your collection, and you may remember its data types from library school. You can query WorldShare Collection Manager to compile records based on common item information like author, subject keyword, language, or publication year. From there you can analyze and filter on any MARC fields you like – or combine with holdings and location data from OCLC’s APIs to map out which libraries have items in your data set. While we won’t get into the nitty-gritty of how, this presentation hopes to inspire you to think about using familiar data at hand to develop data skills. These data are accessible to a broad swath of librarians – at no additional cost beyond what their institution already pays – but tough for others to get, enabling a diverse set of novel projects. Learning objectives include: Learn how to access OCLC WorldShare Collection manager Learn what types of data and search indexes are available through OCLC WorldShare Collection Manager Name some research use-cases for OCLC bibliographic data