OCLC Global Library Statistics page

In order to satisfy numerous requests for statistics about the worldwide library community OCLC created the Global Library Statistics page for use by the entire library community. The interactive page includes data for the total number of libraries, librarians, volumes, expenditures and users for every country and territory in the world broken down into the major library types: academic, public, school, special and national. The service was originally a joint project of OCLC Research and the OCLC Library, and Research has contributed to its development.

New OCLC Report on Digitization

OCLC Research Division recently published a report of interest to Librarians and Archivists titled: “Scan and Deliver: Managing User-initiated Digitization in Special Collections and Archives”. This report presents strategies for providing efficient and economical delivery of digital copies of materials in special collections. It also looks at the
factors affecting digitization-on-demand workflows and ways to reduce cumbersome workflow and policy issues. This report is certain to be of use to information professionals who wish to learn about how libraries have adapted local practices to simplify user-initiated digitization workflows and also devloped common strategies for streamlining the process of creating and delivering digital images to users.

More information about the origins of the report is listed on the OCLC website

The full text of ther report is located here: http://www.oclc.org/research/publications/library/2011/2011-05.pdf