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Attention ALA members: Vote in the 2006 ALA election!

President’s race features two accomplished librarians,
both well-known to OCLC members

ALA Presidential candidates Loriene Roy and Bill Crowe at OCLC for meetings of their respective OCLC groups.

On April 24, the polls will close on the 2006 American Library Association election and on May 1 a new Vice President/President-elect will be announced.

The candidates are William J. Crowe and Loriene Roy, two names that may sound familiar to OCLC Abstracts readers. Dr. Crowe has been on the OCLC Board of Trustees since 1996 and served as its Chair for four years. Dr. Roy was one of the founding members of OCLC’s WebJunction Advisory Council, and has served with this group since 2002.

Dr. Roy is a Professor in the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin while Dr. Crowe is the Head of the Spencer Research Library at the University of Kansas in Lawrence.

OCLC Abstracts asked both candidates to identify the top three issues facing the library community and how they would address them as ALA President and via their involvement with OCLC.

View story

Online video achieving mass appeal with news leading
the way

According to a study from the Online Publishers Association (OPA), video viewing online has reached the point where it is routine practice for many Internet users. Among the findings in From Early Adoption to Common Practice: A Primer on Online Video Viewing:

24 percent of Internet users access video at least once a week, while 46 percent watch video at least once a month.
News videos lead the way in frequency of viewing, with 27 percent of online video viewers watching at least once a week, followed closely by funny videos, which 26 percent watch at least once a week.
Online video viewing is common at home. Nearly 40 percent of those with home Internet access watch at least once a week, compared to 19 percent who watch at least once a week at work.
When it comes to finding the videos they watch, half of all video viewers go to a specific Web site to find video; 58 percent say they rely on two to five sites.
Another popular way to find video is through random surfing, which is done by 48 percent of video viewers.

View news release
View report

QuestionPoint continues to grow

More than 1,700 libraries in 23 countries are using QuestionPoint, a virtual reference desk service developed by OCLC and the Library of Congress that includes local and global reference management tools and a 24/7 Reference Cooperative. Over 800 libraries from 11 statewide services, plus groups of libraries in seven other states, have formed 24/7 Reference Cooperatives—custom created networks using QuestionPoint tools—to provide round-the-clock coverage for a specific group of libraries. About 500 institutions are active in the QuestionPoint Global Reference Network, a worldwide system of libraries that route questions and answers to each other based on profiles of expertise.

Recent QuestionPoint implementations:

Bibliothèque nationale de France, the National Library of France
Bibliothèque Publique d’Information, a nationwide network of public libraries in France
Haifa University, Mount Carmel, Israel
MassAnswers, a Massachusetts consortium consisting of the Boston Public Library and nine regional reference centers.
Q and A NJ, a statewide cooperative of academic and public libraries that provide 24-hour service to New Jersey residents
Chulalongkorn University library in Thailand

View QuestionPoint information

OCLC welcomes these new member libraries

Lund University Library at the Center for Languages and Literature
Location: Lund, Sweden
OCLC Symbol: SELLL
OCLC Network: OCLC PICA

Al al-Bayt University
Location: Mafraq, Jordan
OCLC Symbol: JOABU
OCLC Network: OCLC Middle East and India

Little Sandy Correctional Complex
Location: Sandy Hook, Kentucky, USA
OCLC Symbol: LSCCX
OCLC Network: SOLINET

Brownstown Central High School
Location: Brownstown, Indiana, USA
OCLC Symbol: INBCH
OCLC Network: INCOLSA

South Elementary School
Location: Des Plaines, Illinois, USA
OCLC Symbol: INSOE
OCLC Network: ILLINET

Plainfield Elementary School
Location: Des Plaines, Illinois, USA
OCLC Symbol: INPES
OCLC Network: ILLINET

Membership guidelines

WorldCat update

WorldCat is the world’s most comprehensive bibliographic database. Updated at a rate of nearly one new record every 10 seconds, WorldCat contains more than 65 million bibliographic records and 1 billion holdings contributed by more than 9,000 libraries around the world. The Open WorldCat program makes the items in library collections—physical and digital, popular or special—discoverable by people searching the Internet.

See the latest WorldCat record

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