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

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

Encounters with History: Learning and Teaching from Primary Sources

This was a program of the Boston Regional Library System. I was only able to get to the end of this presentation, so I missed the--already-blogged!--segments from:

Earle Havens, Acting Curator
Rare Books and Manuscripts, BPL
http://www.bpl.org/research/rb/collections.htm

Beth Prindle
Manager, John Adams Library Project
http://www.johnadamslibrary.org/

I came in at the end of the presentation from:

Ron Grim, Curator and Roni Pick, Director
Norman B. Leventhal Map Center
http://maps.bpl.org/
This collection has many maps with birdseye views—users can zoom in on the maps to see buildings, ships, etc.

Marta Pardee-King, Curator of Social Sciences, BPL
http://www.bpl.org/research/socsci/index.htm

Many electronic resources are available from home:
http://www.bpl.org/electronic/index.htm
Using maps with students helps illuminate the events/locations (e.g., when the outline of Boston has changed)
Often the BPL has both scanned images and transcribed text from historic documents; helpful so students can understand the text, but also can see the original.
Marta showed examples and discussed ways to use these documents with students:
:
Textbooks from an older era
Images of people, both old and recent
Examples of changing vocabulary
Political commentary (e.g. cartoons)
Minorities are also represented
For genealogists/beyond the census: Ancestry and New England Ancestors (In library only), city directories, town histories

For a list of primary documents covered by the Massachusetts History and Social Science Curriculum Framework, see:
http://www.doe.mass.edu/frameworks/hss/final.pdf
Appendix A

An issue brought up during Q&A:
Availability of the online materials/indexes means the use of the physical materials is increasing as well, as users are more aware of what exists in these collections, raising preservation issues.

BPL - Encounters with History

Wow! Ancient books that belong to you!

Earle Havens, Acting Curator at BPL talked about the greatest technology, the book, and held up some rare specimans for the audience, including a page from the first printed Bible, the originals of Shakespeare's works, and a book that saved a life in the Civil War (the gunshot hit the book in the soldier's pocket).

Adams gave his library to the country, Jefferson sold his 6,000 books for $25,000 to refurbish the Library of Congress after a fire. Beth Prindle, Manager of the John Adams Library sees this as a testament to John Adams, the farmer's kid from Braintree, as a true founder of democracy. The Adams Project shows Adams permanent record of his interaction with the book. Hundreds of these books have the mark of the owner: underlining, prices, ownership, and "interpretive commentary" Adams argued with his books. "John Adams never saw a piece of paper, he didn't feel compelled to write on it."

Beth Prindle says: BPL is about access, so they developed two websites:

On the Timeline: Personal context in a chronological order with links to his works and artifacts; His face ages asyou precede on the timeline. World history is also linked to the site to give a framework.

When you hold the book, Beth says, you have a powerful experience of holding the book that Adams held, but by putting these books online, the access and research capibilities are harnessed by the Internet. BPL is offering both experiences. Beth also spoke of exhibitions in other locations and unique things that mark early American history. and how this added curatorial content adds to the enjoyment of history and more research possibilities.

http://www.johnadamslibrary.org

Beth said passionately: If no one knows you have it, what purpose is it?

I had a chance to do a bus tour to BPL this spring so I encourage you to visit the exhibit soon, but for digital excellence also check out the website.