WebJunction

The WebJunction Story

WebJunction is an online community for library staff. We build and support collaborative environments (like this one!) where library staff come together to connect, create, and learn. We are driven by the vision of relevant, vibrant, and sustainable libraries in every community.

WebJunction is hosted by OCLC. We're slightly different from other OCLC products and services because we started with support and investment from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Our ambition is to be a fully self-sustaining online community service for the library field by 2012.

In order to achieve this goal, we operate as a social enterprise. This means that we develop for-fee (subscription) services for library service organizations on behalf of their members or the communities they serve. These subscriptions help us provide free services to all our members, regardless of their individual ability to pay, and support our vision of vibrant, relevant libraries in every community.

WebJunction would not be possible without the support of our initial grant investment, continuing subscriptions from our library agency partners, and the sharing of knowledge and content from our community members. The success of WebJunction is contingent upon the participation of the entire library field—so please join us!

We believe that

• Libraries play a vital role in their communities
• Library staff have the power to make libraries "vibrant, relevant and sustainable"
• Community is central to everything we do
• Partnerships are the foundation of our success
• User experience is more important than a lot of new features
• Ownership of content and resources should be retained by our contributors
• It's OK to try and fail, so long as we learn and share
• Having fun makes learning and sharing more memorable, and rewarding
• Our common trust is what makes us possible — the trust that our members, partners, and investors have with us and with each other

WebJunction started with investments from OCLC, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, IMLS, and others. We think of this as philanthropic "venture capital." While some investors seek to start new enterprise for the private sector, these organizations have invested in our enterprise for the social sector. This investment is meant to serve the common good for all libraries.

Meanwhile, we seek to become a self-sustaining community service for the library field. In support of this goal, we will continue to offer for-fee subscription services to library organizations on behalf of the library staff that they serve. We'll also continue to aggregate and publish materials from our content partners, and from individual members. WebJunction is only relevant, vibrant, and sustainable (ourselves) with continued commitment and participation from both our individual library staff members and our library service organization partners.

The Team

We believe we have the best team of professionals working anywhere in libraryland. You'll find current staff profiles linked from the right-hand side bar. Please don't hesitate to contact us with suggestions, questions, concerns, or other inquiries.

Our Partners

WebJunction is supported in part by OCLC, additional grants from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,  our library service organization partners, and by our community of individual library staff actively contributing and sharing every day in our member center and around the site.

Our Community Partners create entirely customized versions of WebJunction for the library staff in their service areas. Their members enjoy additional, localized content, a custom look and feel on their site, and access to free courses through a customized catalog. These partners work closely with us to develop new content, courses, and features for the entire network of community members using WebJunction.  

Other partners work with us to create customized, smaller Communities of Practice at WebJunction, or to  provide custom online learning services for their library staff. Please visit our services if you'd like to learn more about our partners or their subscriptions.

Our Advisors

• Laura Breeden, Education Development Center, Inc.
• Martin Gomez, Urban Libraries Council
• Andy Gordon, University of Washington
• John D. Hales, Jr., Suwannee River Regional Library
• Kate Nevins, SOLINET (Southeastern Library Network)
• Jill Nishi, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
• Loriene Roy, University of Texas at Austin
• Daniel Walters, Las Vegas-Clark County Library District
• Kendall Wiggin, Connecticut State Library
• Alane Wilson, Executive Director, British Columbia Library Association
• Mike Crandall, University of Washington
• Sari Feldman, Cuyahoga County Public Library
• Dottie Hiebing, Metropolitan New York Library Council
• Holly Hinman, InfoPeople
• Bonnie Juergens, Amigos Library Services
• Karen Strege, Western Council of State Libraries
• Phil Turner, University of North Texas
• Mary Wegner, State Library of Iowa

Our History

In 2002, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation awarded OCLC a three-year grant to build an online community for public libraries and other organizations that provide public access to information. Building on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's five-year Library Program, which provided over 40,000 computers and Internet access to more than 11,000 libraries across the United States and Canada, WebJunction was initially a collaborative project with five organizations, led by OCLC.

Founded in 1967, OCLC is a nonprofit, membership, computer library service and research organization dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the world's information and reducing the rate of rise of library costs. More than 69,000 libraries in 112 countries and territories around the world use OCLC services to locate, acquire, catalog, lend and preserve library materials.

For the initial grant, OCLC partners for the WebJunction project were:

• The Colorado State Library: initial needs assessment and evaluation
• The Benton Foundation: online community development
• Isoph: online learning management
• TechSoup: technology related content and community building

The original WebJunction site launched in May of 2003. A year later, we launched our first five customized sites with our initial Community Partners in Colorado, Connecticut, Washington, New Mexico, and Iowa. Since 2004, we've completed special projects for Technology Planning, Hardware Upgrades, Outreach to Rural and Spanish-speaking communities, Managing Public Access Computers, and a variety of learning and training related research and pilot programs. In 2005 we started offering volume course purchase to library organizations, followed by a webconferencing tool in 2006.

In 2008, WebJunction migrated to an entirely new platform, also supported by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The new platform includes features that allow us to build on our community features, capture contributions more easily, and provide additional services to library organizations. For details around this transition, you can read The Next WebJunction blog posts we made about the changes as we went through them, or take a look at the Looking Forward and Looking Back articles we published at that time.

Press Clippings

• ARSL and WebJunction to Collaborate (September 2007)
• WebJunction Awarded Gates Grant to Enhance Site (October 2006)
• WebJunction E-Learning Advisory Committee Announced (March 2006)
• WebJunction Awarded Gates Grant to Extend SLO Program (October 2005)
• Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation awards grants to WebJunction (April 2005)
• Public Libraries Meet at WebJunction (May 2003)

WebJunction occasionally publishes research about library staff and services. You'll find these publications in our content collection in their relevant topic areas as well.

• Latino Perceptions of Public Libraries (2008)
• Sustaining Public Access Computing Programs: Technology and Management Competencies (2007)
• Blended Learning Guide (2007)
• Trends in E-Learning for Library Staff: a summary of research findings (2006)

In addition to these publications, check out the right sidebar for links to a blog and Twitter searches for "WebJunction." For links to our most recent promotion materials, or if you have something you'd like to add, please visit our member center.

Jobs

We work with a talented team of smart, engaged, and passionate professionals with all kinds of backgrounds and expertise. If you'd like to keep an eye on our upcoming employment opportunities, we generally have position openings located in either Seattle, WA, or Dublin, OH. We post those openings on OCLC's career page, PNLA's job listings page, iProJobs (ListServ) and on Craig's List (Seattle).