Lorcan Dempsey is a librarian who was a vice president and Chief Strategist of OCLC, where he worked for 21 years between 2001 and 2022. [1] [2]
He is a native of Dublin, Ireland, where he worked for some years in public libraries. [3] He writes and talks about libraries and networked information. He is interested in the impact of changing patterns of research and learning on libraries, in libraries as public institutions, and in the architecture of digital information environments. [4]
Dempsey was appointed director of UKOLN, a research and policy unit at the University of Bath, in 1994. [5]
In May 2000, Dempsey moved to work for the Jisc; part of his assignment involved being Programme Director of the DNER. [6] In 2001 he joined the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) as Vice-President of Research. [3] He was named OCLC Chief Strategist in March 2004. [3]
In January 2022, OCLC announced that Dempsey would retire from his position in April 2022, [7] though he stayed through June. [2]
In August 2023, Dempsey joined the faculty at the University of Washington Information School as Professor of Practice and Distinguished Practitioner in Residence, teaching in its MLIS and undergraduate programs. [8]
Dempsey maintains a blog [4] aimed at the wider library and digital information sectors, and tweets [9] on similar issues.
A 2007 blog post was responsible for the coining of the term amplified conference . [10] He has introduced many other concepts and terminology into the library community, including the network level; collective collection ; disclosure; sourcing and scaling; library logistics; making data work harder; Amazoogle; in the flow; discovery happens elsewhere; inside out and outside in (of collections) and web scale. [11] He introduced the term memory institution into popular use. [12]
Dempsey has written [13] and presented [14] extensively on library issues. [15] His published works cover topics such as the Warwick Framework, [16] libraries in the contemporary world, [17] the evolution of the digital library, [18] and the library catalogue. [19]
In 2006 he noted the importance of Wikipedia as an addressable knowledge base : Wikipedia makes it easy to include in any online communications a pointer to more knowledge on any topic using a convenient stable URL. [20] "The economy and convenience of doing this is enormous", he said. [20]
Rather than continuing a tedious Wikipedia good/Wikipedia bad conversation, we should recognize the attraction it has as an addressable knowledge base, understand the variety of uses to which it is put, and remind folks of the judgments they need to make depending on those uses.
— Lorcan Dempsey, "Wikipedia again: an addressable knowledge base" [21]
In 2012 he noted: "Wikipedia is already an 'addressable knowledge base', which creates huge value. DBpedia aims to add structure to this. Perhaps more importantly, Wikidata is an initiative to create a machine- and human-readable knowledge base of all the entities in Wikipedia and allow them to be augmented with further data and links." [22]
Dempsey is the co-recipient of the 2004 ALCTS presidential citation [30] and the 2010 NFAIS Miles Conrad award. [31] [32] In June 2014, Dempsey was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of the University (DUniv) by The Open University of the UK. [33]
Dempsey is married to Ann Lennon, also a librarian. He has two children. [34]
An encyclopedia or encyclopædia is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge either general or special to a particular field or discipline. Encyclopedias are divided into articles or entries that are arranged alphabetically by article name or by thematic categories, or else are hyperlinked and searchable. Encyclopedia entries are longer and more detailed than those in most dictionaries. Generally speaking, encyclopedia articles focus on factual information concerning the subject named in the article's title; this is unlike dictionary entries, which focus on linguistic information about words, such as their etymology, meaning, pronunciation, use, and grammatical forms.
Formerly known as The United Kingdom Office for Library and Information Networking, UKOLN was a centre of expertise in digital information management, providing advice and services to the library, information, education and cultural heritage communities. UKOLN was based at the University of Bath and was funded through a mixture of core and project grants. Latterly it received its core funding solely from JISC, but had received core grants previously from the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council and the British Library.
OCLC, Inc., doing business as OCLC, is an American nonprofit cooperative organization "that provides shared technology services, original research, and community programs for its membership and the library community at large". It was founded in 1967 as the Ohio College Library Center, then became the Online Computer Library Center as it expanded. In 2017, the name was formally changed to OCLC, Inc. OCLC and thousands of its member libraries cooperatively produce and maintain WorldCat, the largest online public access catalog in the world. OCLC is funded mainly by the fees that libraries pay for the many different services it offers. OCLC also maintains the Dewey Decimal Classification system.
WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions, in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the OCLC member libraries collectively maintain WorldCat's database, the world's largest bibliographic database. The database includes other information sources in addition to member library collections. OCLC makes WorldCat itself available free to libraries, but the catalog is the foundation for other subscription OCLC services. WorldCat is used by librarians for cataloging and research and by the general public.
The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) is an international body representing the interests of people who rely on libraries and information professionals. A non-governmental, not-for-profit organization, IFLA was founded in Scotland in 1927 with headquarters at the National Library of the Netherlands in The Hague. IFLA sponsors the annual IFLA World Library and Information Congress, promoting access to information, ideas, and works of imagination for social, educational, cultural, democratic, and economic empowerment. IFLA also produces several publications, including IFLA Journal.
A digital asset is anything that exists only in digital form and comes with a distinct usage right, or distinct permission for use. Data that do not possess that right are not considered assets.
The State Library of Queensland is the main reference and research library provided to the people of the State of Queensland, Australia, by the state government. Its legislative basis is provided by the Queensland Libraries Act 1988. It contains a significant portion of Queensland's documentary heritage, major reference and research collections, and is an advocate of and partner with public libraries across Queensland. The library is at Kurilpa Point, within the Queensland Cultural Centre on the Brisbane River at South Bank.
Jimmy Donal Wales, also known on Wikipedia by the nickname Jimbo Wales, is an American–British Internet entrepreneur, webmaster, and former financial trader. He is a co-founder of the online non-profit encyclopedia Wikipedia and the for-profit wiki hosting service Fandom. He has worked on other online projects, including Bomis, Nupedia, WikiTribune, and WT Social.
The democratization of knowledge is the acquisition and spread of knowledge amongst a wider part of the population, not just privileged elites such as clergy and academics. Libraries, in particular public libraries, and modern information technology such as the Internet play a key role, as they provide the masses with open access to information.
The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. (WMF) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, and registered as a charitable foundation under local laws. It is best known as the host platform for Wikipedia, the largest crowdsourced online encyclopedia in the world, but also hosts other related projects and MediaWiki, a wiki software.
Wikimania is the Wikimedia movement's annual conference, organized by volunteers and hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. Topics of presentations and discussions include Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia, other wikis, open-source software, free knowledge and free content, and social and technical aspects related to these topics.
GLAM is an acronym for galleries, libraries, archives, and museums, and refers to cultural institutions with a mission to provide access to knowledge. GLAMs collect and maintain cultural heritage materials in the public interest. As collecting institutions, GLAMs preserve and make accessible primary sources valuable for researchers.
Trove is an Australian online library database owned by the National Library of Australia in which it holds partnerships with source providers National and State Libraries Australia, an aggregator and service which includes full text documents, digital images, bibliographic and holdings data of items which are not available digitally, and a free faceted-search engine as a discovery tool.
Julie Marie Meyer MBE is an American businesswoman and the author of Welcome to Entrepreneur Country. She is the sole director of Viva Investment Partners. She founded Ariadne Capital Limited and Ariadne Capital Malta Limited, and was a co-founder of the networking forum First Tuesday. In 2009, Meyer was a guest on the online edition of the Dragons' Den TV series.
This is a list of books about Wikipedia or for which Wikipedia is a major subject.
A memory institution is an organization maintaining a repository of public knowledge, a generic term used about institutions such as libraries, archives, heritage institutions, aquaria and arboreta, and zoological and botanical gardens, as well as providers of digital libraries and data aggregation services which serve as memories for given societies or mankind. Memory institutions serve the purpose of documenting, contextualizing, preserving and indexing elements of human culture and collective memory. These institutions allow and enable society to better understand themselves, their past, and how the past impacts their future. These repositories are ultimately preservers of communities, languages, cultures, customs, tribes, and individuality. Memory institutions are repositories of knowledge, while also being actors of the transitions of knowledge and memory to the community. These institutions ultimately remain some form of collective memory. Increasingly such institutions are considered as a part of a unified documentation and information science perspective.
A Wikipedian in residence or Wikimedian in residence (WiR) is a Wikipedia editor, a Wikipedian, who accepts a placement with an institution, typically an art gallery, library, archive, museum, cultural institution, learned society, or institute of higher education to facilitate Wikipedia entries related to that institution's mission, encourage and assist it to release material under open licenses, and to develop the relationship between the host institution and the Wikimedia community. A Wikipedian in residence generally helps to coordinate Wikipedia-related outreach events between the GLAM and the general public such as editathons.
Deanna Bowling Marcum was an American librarian and nonprofit leader who served as president of the Council on Library and Information Resources from 1995 to 2003, Associate Librarian for Library Services at the Library of Congress from 2003 to 2011, and managing director of Ithaka S+R from 2012 to 2016.
A collective collection, shared collection, or shared print program is a joint effort by multiple academic or research libraries to house, manage, and provide access to their collective physical collections. Most shared print programs focus on collections of monographs and/or serials. Similar efforts have addressed acquisition and/or retention of microform, federal government documents, and digital collections. Shared print programs often have activities in common with national repositories and archiving programs. Discussions surrounding shared print programs in their current form have come to the forefront as a popular solution to shrinking collection budgets, rising costs of resources, and competing space needs.