OCLC Open Survey slides for COAR - Titia -2


COAR 2019 – Lyon, France

Open Content in or Beyond the Repository Ecosystem: 
findings from the 2018 OCLC Open Content Survey

Titia van der Werf
Senior Program Officer, OCLC Research



As of 30 December 2018

The international context: a global network of libraries

Americas

10,060 members in 23 
countries

EMEA

6,050 members in 78 
countries

Asia Pacific

1,472 members in 20 
countries



Scale and accelerate library learning, innovation and collaboration



OCLC Global Council Program Committee

Debbie Schachter 
Chair (ARC)

Rupert Schaab
(EMEA)

Tuba Akbaytürk
(EMEA)

Kuang-hua Chen 
(APRC)



Defining the scope

• Not only OA – also other freely available online 
open content

• Acknowledging the "continuum of openness“
• All library types
• All library services
• All over the world



1. Institutional repository
2. Supporting 

authors/researchers/teachers
3. Advocacy and policies 
4. Publishing
5. Data services 
6. Bibliometrics 
7. Selecting open content NOT 

managed by my library 

14 categories of open content services
8. Supporting 

users/instruction/literacy
9. Promoting the discovery of open 

content 
10. Digitizing collections 
11. Digital Collections Library
12. Born-digital (legal) deposit/Web-

archiving
13. Deep interactions with open 

content 
14. Assessment



SURVEY FINDINGS



Responses by Library Type

University & 
Research 

72%

Vocational 
and Other 
Education

8%

Public 
8%

Special 
7%

National 
2%

Other  
3%Total: 705 responses from 82 

countries

Research & University: 511 
responses from 69 countries













7%

6%

8%

10%

5%

10%

8%

7%

7%

9%

17%

12%

10%

19%

38%

40%

40%

39%

46%

41%

45%

49%

50%

53%

51%

56%

63%

59%

55%

54%

53%

50%

49%

49%

46%

44%

43%

38%

32%

32%

27%

21%

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Publishing  (n=191)

Supporting users/instr ucting/digital literacy programs  (n=266)

Supporting authors/r esearcher s/teachers  (n=252)

Institutional repository (n=274)

Advocacy and policies  (n=223)

Data services  (n=1 70)

Digit izing collections  (n=237)

Bibliometrics  (n=138)

Born-digital (legal) deposit/Web-archive (n=126)

Assessment (n=137)

Selecting open content not managed by the library  (n=229)

Digit al Collections Library (n=227)

Deep interactions with open cont ent  (n=109)

Promoting the discover y of open content  (n=268)

OCLC supports my library's efforts I see a r ole for OCL C to suppor t I do not see a role for OCLC to support

OCLC’s role in support of libraries’ open content activities



7%

6%

8%

10%

5%

10%

8%

7%

7%

9%

17%

12%

10%

19%

38%

40%

40%

39%

46%

41%

45%

49%

50%

53%

51%

56%

63%

59%

55%

54%

53%

50%

49%

49%

46%

44%

43%

38%

32%

32%

27%

21%

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Publishing  (n=191)

Supporting users/instr ucting/digital literacy programs  (n=266)

Supporting authors/r esearcher s/teachers  (n=252)

Institutional repository (n=274)

Advocacy and policies  (n=223)

Data services  (n=1 70)

Digit izing collections  (n=237)

Bibliometrics  (n=138)

Born-digital (legal) deposit/Web-archive (n=126)

Assessment (n=137)

Selecting open content not managed by the library  (n=229)

Digit al Collections Library (n=227)

Deep interactions with open cont ent  (n=109)

Promoting the discover y of open content  (n=268)

OCLC supports my library's efforts I see a r ole for OCL C to suppor t I do not see a role for OCLC to support

OCLC’s role in support of libraries’ open content activities



TENTATIVE CONCLUSIONS FROM THE 
SURVEY FINDINGS



Tentative conclusions
• Libraries are mostly invested in Open Content activities relating 

to:
– Research support
– Digital Libraries

where they are more confident to achieve impact.

• Open Content activities relating to Discovery seem to be 
suffering from a lack of resources, unclear funding and priorities.



©2016 OCLC [list any external authors here]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Suggested attribution: “This work 
uses content from [list presentation title] © OCLC, [list any external authors here] used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License: 
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.”

THANK YOU

Titia van der Werf

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/