Gain the assistance you need, when and where you need it. Whether it is improving workflow, consulting on OCLC products and services, or assisting with digital and preservation projects, OCLC Western can help.
Workflow management
Through individual consulting and group education, we can organize a practical, business-oriented approach to assessing and managing your institution’s workflow. Our staff can focus on your entire organization or specific work units such as cataloging, resource sharing, batchloading and collection analysis services. Every institution is unique and that’s how we approach our consulting objectives.
Having completed consulting at numerous libraries of all types and sizes, we have the knowledge and experience to help identify and implement individualized solutions for workflow improvement in just about any environment. This experience allows us to develop best practices based on actuality, not just statistical models, as well as share general information about successful techniques.
Our group education seminars focus on the decision-making process of selecting, implementing and managing the workflow; how to evaluate your current environment against statistical benchmarks based on results from similar libraries; and discussing how to monitor future improvements.
Current group education opportunities:
Digital and preservation programs
OCLC Western’s Digital and Preservation Program offers program development and project advice on a variety of digital collection and preservation topics including: collection assessment, site surveys, project planning, and project management.
In addition, we can provide information on technical processes, workflow development for reformatting collections, best practices and national standards for digital collections and for preservation of physical collections. Grant review and grant proposal writing services are also available.
Learn more in Digital and Preservation programs.
Consulting on OCLC services
As a regional office of OCLC, we are equipped to help you achieve your institutions goals and objectives using OCLC products and services.
Consulting projects typically begin with an in-depth statistical appraisal of your OCLC activity in a core service or for a specific OCLC product. We then conduct an on-site observation and interview key personnel—looking for roadblocks within the flow of activities between and within related units. The project concludes with a comprehensive written report of recommendations to help you meet specific short- and mid-range goals, addressing such issues as the choice of suitable system interfaces, suggestions about specific workflow improvements and guidance in building the skills your staff needs to better perform their tasks and speed throughput of materials. We will also review opportunities that may be appropriate for outsourcing some processes and suggest how to deploy current or future personnel to meet your objectives.
