Timeless lessons on collaboration from OCLC Research

Several OCLC Research reports have exerted influence on the library profession. Among these, the 2008 report Beyond the Silos of the LAMs: Collaboration Among Libraries, Archives and Museums, offers timeless lessons to the library profession that are worth revisiting.  

Collaboration is a topic of ongoing interest and need for libraries. It has long been an important area of inquiry at OCLC Research because of its fundamental role in effective library work. One participant in the RLP discussion groups that led to the report said,

“Within our professional competencies, there is. . . an ethical requirement for us to be thinking about the future. I don’t think I’d consider myself a good librarian if I wasn’t actually thinking about collaborations across boundaries.” 

The Silos report, despite its punny name, delivers enduring value by offering a compelling framework for how collaborations mature. And while the report was focused on libraries, archives, and museums (LAMs), its findings and recommendations apply across many library activities.  

Collaboration continuum 

The Collaboration Continuum framework depicts collaborative activity across a spectrum, illustrating a gradual increase in interdependency and benefits. The framework is elegant in its simplicity, offering a simple yet compelling view of how and why collaborations flourish.

As collaborations move from left to right on this continuum, collaborative efforts require greater investments, risk-taking, and trust, while offering the potential for greater rewards for all participating partners. The initial stages (Contact, Cooperation, Coordination) are seen as additive, fostering working relationships that are layered on top of existing processes, without changes to institutional hierarchies or organizational structures. Cooperation and Coordination rely upon both informal and formal agreements between groups to achieve common goals.  

But the fourth stage, Collaboration, offers “a new vision for a new way of doing things.” It involves fundamental change and transformation, which makes it a much more ambitious undertaking. Convergence represents a state where collaboration has matured to the level of infrastructure that is so ingrained that it may no longer even be recognized as a collaborative effort.  

It’s not just about LAMS 

While written to foster greater collaboration between libraries, archives, and museums, the Silos report is relevant to a much broader library audience. In fact, as academic libraries are increasingly assuming new research support responsibilities–such as research data management, ORCID adoption, and research impact services—collaboration with other campus units become imperative. This imperative stems from the complex research lifecycle that spans multiple stakeholder groups where no single unit, including the library, can “own” research support. Instead, cross-unit collaboration is increasingly required, and the library must now work with unfamiliar partners such as research administration, faculty affairs, and campus communications.  

The Collaboration Continuum offers a framework that can guide libraries as they develop research support capacity with campus partners in support of institutional goals. Building trust relationships is challenging in a decentralized university environment characterized by local autonomy and incessant leadership churn, and more recent OCLC Research outputs such as Social Interoperability in Research Support: Cross-Campus Partnerships and the University Research Enterprise, build upon the Silos report to offer strategies and tactics that librarians may apply to build social interoperability, “the creation and maintenance of working relationships across individuals and organizational units that promote collaboration, communication, and mutual understanding.”  

Both the Silos and Social Interoperability reports inform current OCLC Research work as we observe libraries forging new partnerships with other units in the campus community. Many partnerships are ad hoc and experimental, falling in the Cooperation and Coordination sections of the Collaboration Continuum. But some collaborations are establishing more formalized operational structures, such as the University of Manchester Office of Open Research or Montana State University Research Alliance, where library expertise and capacities are combined with those of other campus units, moving these partnerships closer to the Collaboration segment of the Collaboration Continuum. These changes have implications for library strategies, organizational structures, and value proposition, which we are examining in the OCLC Research Library Beyond the Library project.  

Collaboration catalysts 

The Silos report also describes nine Collaboration Catalysts that can help partnerships flourish. This list can serve as a useful checklist for assessing readiness for moving further along the Collaboration Continuum, and the absence of catalysts can suggest project risk. I summarize these briefly here, but I encourage you to read the richer explanation and examples in the report.  

• Vision—A collaboration must be embedded in an overarching vision shared by all participants. This is core. 
• Mandate— A mandate, conveyed through strategic plans or high-level directives, can incentivize collaboration. 
• Incentives—Collaborations nurtured by incentive structures reward both individual and collective efforts. 
• Change agents—Collaborations require leadership from a trusted individual, department, or programmatic home base to provide stability and sustained stewardship. 
• Mooring—Collaborations thrive when they have an administrative home base from which they can operate, communicate, and incorporate their efforts into broader institutional goals. In practice, however, collaborations are often handshake agreements with individuals reporting to different units, which can threaten the partnership in a dynamic institutional environment. 
• Resources—Collaborations must be adequately resourced in order to succeed. This includes funding, human labor, expertise, and necessary infrastructure. 
• Flexibility—When professionals approach collaboration with open-mindedness, they can learn and embrace new ideas from other stakeholders.  
• External catalysts—Factors like peer pressure, funding requirements, and user needs can influence the decision to partner with others.  
• Trust—Trust is foundational to any collaborative relationship due to the resulting interdependencies. 

Enduring relevance 

Beyond the Silos of the LAMs is aging well and remains one of the greatest hits in the OCLC Research back catalog. The report offers timeless guidance for libraries, museums, and archives that extends to broader library audiences today.   

I invite you to read the full report—available open access like all OCLC Research reports—and consider where your collaborations fall on the continuum and whether your partnerships have multiple collaboration catalysts in play, as the report suggests.  

AI Nota Bene: I used AI tools to write this blog post. I found Claude to be useful as an editor and proofreader of my final draft, as I prompted it to recommend ways I could improve clarity and conciseness. I also prompted Claude to help me find a title for this essay. I incorporated many, but not all, of Claude’s suggestions.