Not Your Mother's ILL: Rethinking Resource Sharing

Who's rethinking resource sharing?

Barbara Preece, Executive Director, Boston Consortium, Inc.
bpreece@blc.org

Michael Colford
mcolford@bpl.org

Evan D. Simpson
esimpson@brandeis.edu

Susan Applegate
sapplegate@bpl.org

and others...

Current trends in Interlibrary Loan:
World Cat Local replacing InReach

• ILLIAD being used
• Instead of Interlibrary Loan, vendor to supply what patrons want
• Digital Library Federation (diglib.org)
• Vendors are supporting this sharing circulation code to increase Interlibrary Loan
• New applications are being added (Patron holds; Patron self check-out)
  
  FULL TEXT DIGITIZATION
  Google Scholar and others
  
  FOUR SUBGROUPS
  Policies and Cultural Issues
  User Need
  Delivery
  Interoperability
  

POLICIES
Let my materials go!
Still discussions going on about whether materials should circulate beyond the owning library. Access vs. Ownership issues still cropping up but people need to let it go.

RADICAL POLICY IDEAS
Floating collections
Purchase on demad & give to requester; Bookswim.com
Direct delivery to patrons from lending library
No due dates, no overdues
etc.



INTEROPERABILITY ISSUES
Issues need to be listed and categorized to deal with some typical resistance:
"That's just the way we have done it!"
'How does that effect my workflow?"

DELIVERY
Statewide study of delivery is beginning
New ways to delivery
Using the postal service
Scan-on-Demand - items out of copyright and "orphaned works" -> scan -> send
(orphaned works are still in copyright, but out of print, and released from publisher)
Send patrons the link to already scanned books (American Libraries)
Offer patron option to purchase
etc.

Boston hopes to expand beyond the OCLC requests.
Local patrons are not served by these services

Other issues:
Electronic Resource Management
How do we tap into the resources?
How do we resist creating silos?
How can we find out what has been digitized?
How can we bring all the people who are involved in these systems (vendor databases, libraries, other collections) together?
Patrons are using new things to bring them to resources


Rethinking Resource Sharing, Northeast Chapter being formed!
This ILL, New England Chapter, hopes to serve as a "think tank" for service
-Small working group to plan (10 to 12 people) - BLC Initiative
-A day long symposium on resource sharing in the fall, perhaps at NELA
-Who should attend:
-Reference
-ILL
- Collection Development


-Policies need to be developed


"Your patrons are Our patrons" - "Interlibrary Loan is a popular library service, so we (librarians) should make it less restrictive to keep libraries more relevant.

Be sure to find out more about:
Scanning Center at BPL
10 cents a page and archive
Adept scribers that will scan


http://www.blc.org/news/blc_oca_release.html

Reaching Out to Users Wherever They Are: Keeping Up-To-Date with QuestionPoint

Reaching Out to Users Wherever They Are: Keeping Up-To-Date with QuestionPoint
Speaker: Susan McGlamery, Global Product Manager, OCLC's QuestionPoint
Thursday, 8:30-10:30am

I like to start many of my blogs with links so that readers may get some background info on the presentation. I included links here assuming many of you might be interested in QuestionPoint, but are not sure where to begin looking.

Here are a couple of links:
http://www.questionpoint.org/
http://www.oclc.org/questionpoint/default.htm

Susan McGlamery is responsible for setting up the 24/7 reference cooperative in 2000, known as 24/7 Reference. 24/7 Reference was acquired by OCLC in 2004, now called QuestionPoint.

The goal, or challenge, is to bring the power of librarians into the convenient format of the computer. The reference service set out to meet the user's needs by being user centric and format independent. QuestionPoint meets user needs at the point of need that combines with the cooperative aspect--meaning that many libraries participate in responding to patron questions.

The cooperative offers 24 hour service to every member who chooses to participate. Libraries don't need to staff their reference desks at all hours.
The biggest public cooperative is Mass Answers here in Massachusetts; the biggest academic cooperative is the BLC, also here in Massachusetts.

The link to the reference service can appear on the library web page, library OPAC, library databases, elearning integration, or Open WorldCat. The linking feature offers a chat widget, called "qwidget." However, the qwidget is not available to all in the cooperative while QuestionPoint is still working out the kinks. Qwidget sessions appear in the QuestionPoint chat monitor. Arlington Heights Library has an example of a qwidget. Check it out here: http://www.ahml.info/find_information/

QuestionPoint also offers enhancement features, such as a spam eliminator by including a CAPTCHA after a patron posts a question online. QP also developed a "Chat 2" by placing the chat frame on the left-hand side, eliminating a lot of the coding, and making the interface easier to read, especially for people with screen readers--equity for QuestionPoint, especially for the visually impaired. QP also offers a knowledge base that allows patrons to search an FAQ database.

QP offers chat transcript, emails, and qwidgets, which are all distinguishable on the library's side when receiving patron inquiries. QP also offers a report feature. The reports are available for institutional supporters of QP, which can access Institutional Reports based on patron usage, including time of day questions, and still links to transcripts.

QP had about 350,000 chat requests received by the Coop. The Coop librarians picked up 195, 761 (59.15%). The rest is picked up by back-up staff. The number picked up by Coop librarians is a little more than half since it represents time librarians are working, which does not reflect questions being asked and answered at 3:00 am.

The QP presentation was pretty straight forward. There seemed to be some concern about the reference service expanding into a larger consortium for academic libraries. As it exists right now, many academic libraries are linked to a regional public library 24/7 reference service, such as MassAnswers. I'd like to hear what you use in your library for 24/7 reference and get your input on developing collaboratives for libraries to be a part of such a coop.

Keeping Collections Open: The Boston Library Consortium and the Open Content Alliance Join Forces

Keeping Collections Open: The Boston Library Consortium and the Open Content Alliance Join Forces

Speakers: Maura Marx, Digital Services Manager, Boston Public Library

Cathy Norton, Director, Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole

Barbara Preece, Executive Director, Boston Library Consortium, Inc.

Wednesday 2:45-4:00

Here are a couple of links on the Boston Library Consortium

http://www.blc.org/

http://www.blc.org/library_user_services/user_guide/user_guide.html

And a couple of links to the Open Content Alliance

http://www.opencontentalliance.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Content_Alliance

I also included a link to BHL

http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/

and the Internet Archive: Biodiversity Heritage Library http://www.archive.org/details/biodiversity

Open Content Alliance—OCA

Why OCA? Why not Google or Microsoft? Barbara Preece drank from the proverbial koolaid.

OCA means:

Bibliographic Accuracy

Ability to repurpose/reuse as needed

Free to All

Internet Archive Scanning Experience would only cost .10 a page

EasyAccess and storage files

Life time management of files

Serve up files or download them

Boston Public Library and Open Content Alliance (BPL and OCA)

Maura Marx

“Free to All”

What did this decision look like for one organization, especially a public research institution? The iconic frieze carved over the McKim building in Copley Square says “Free to All,” the motto which dictated in the decision to join OCA. Google, Microsoft and Thomson Gale were banging on the door of the BPL to get them to digitize their collection. It was difficult to get information on the digitization project. What would it mean to force users to use one search engine to have access to collections? What would it mean if a single commercial entity controls access to the content of the world’s libraries?

Deep soul searching by the Boston Public Library found that:

Digital is preferred access format

BPL has the technology skills and expertise to perform work

Commercial vendors may monetize this at some point, but have access

Detailed comparison really pounded the mission statement “Free to All”

Reality Check—colleagues who were working with Google—like feeding a fire brigade. Working with Google was like working a on schedule with commercial interest with a library that didn’t have staff to work on this.

Openness wins. BPL took root and set-up scanning center in house using scanners.

Funding for BPL came from the Sloan Foundation, responsible for funding many open access ventures.

$170,000—Sloan Foundation @3000, @750 total

Regular upload to archive.org and LibraryThing (http://www.librarything.com/)

Great for John Adams scholarship—ability to research like never before

GOV Docs next big project $250,000 came from Kahle/Austen foundation

Big call for participation to help scan—massive project.

Entire 60 million pages of government documents to be scanned

Cost $6M to scan BPL’s collection of government documents

Scanning project led to scanning of other projects—a lot of genealogy, a lot of history, and some literature based on circulation numbers. BPL gathered an implementation team

Cathy Norton—Encyclopedia of Life, Biodiversity Heritage Library

E.O. Wilson wanted to create an encyclopedia of every living being on earth—free and authoritative

Create these single websites for every known species—BHL raised $50M dollars—Got money from Sloan foundation (interested in open source)

BHL has 10 libraries including the BHL.

BHL Mission: Provide open access to biodiversity literature

Publish core literature and put it on the web for all users around the world

Use internet archive Biodiversity domain that will digitize

over 5.4 million books dating back to 1469

800,000 monographs

40,000 journal titles

50% pre 1923

Taxonomists and other scientists will have access to biodiversity literature globally

Provide developing world with access to historical literature

Scientists working in many biological domains will get access

The advantages quickly became obvious; there is less space needed for library collections

Now key partner in encyclopedia of life

Scribe scanners installed at Natural History Museum in London, NYC and in Boston

Citation upsurge

Long term management of the digital assets is provided by BHL at no cost

Content will be integrated into EOL project through TI nomenclatural linking.

BHL is also developing a strategy to employ taxonomic intelligence scientific text parsing as part of their digitization initiative. The digitization of the published literature of biodiversity held in their respective collections are made available through a global “biodiversity commons.” The digitized texts are being archived here: http://www.archive.org/details/biodiversity

Here are a few more links for reference

http://www.ubio.org

http://www.eol.org

http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org