Strategic Developments in theOrbis Cascade Alliance

AJCU Library Deans Conference

Chicago, March 30, 2009

Presentation by John PopkoUniversity LibrarianSeattle University

With Major Contributions from John HelmerExecutive DirectorOrbis Cascade Alliance

GeographyMembershipChronologyStaffing & GovernanceMajor Programs

Oregon & WashingtonPrivate & Public, 2-year & 4-year

Colleges, Universities, Community collegesMembers serving 600 – 42,000 students (FTE)

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Central Oregon Comm. CollegeCentral Washington UniversityChemeketa Community CollegeClark CollegeConcordia UniversityEastern Oregon UniversityEastern Washington UniversityGeorge Fox UniversityLane Community CollegeLewis & Clark CollegeLinfield CollegeMt. Hood Community CollegeOregon State UniversityOregon Health & Science Univ.Oregon Institute of TechnologyOregon State UniversityPacific UniversityPortland Community CollegePortland State UniversityReed CollegeSaint Martin’s CollegeSeattle Pacific UniversitySeattle UniversitySouthern Oregon UniversityThe Evergreen State CollegeUniversity of OregonUniversity of PortlandUniversity of Puget SoundUniversity of WashingtonWalla Walla CollegeWarner Pacific CollegeWashington State UniversityWestern Oregon UniversityWestern Washington UniversityWhitman CollegeWillamette University

7Puget Sound

Sept 19937 Oregon institutions form Orbis, launch the

Orbis Union CatalogFeb 1997

1st Washington library joins OrbisOrbis, now 11 members, launches patron-

initiated borrowing with INN-ReachJuly 2000

6 Washington public 4-yr institutions form Cascade, launch Cascade Union Catalog

Orbis membership at 15

Oct 2002Orbis and Cascade merge, creating Orbis

Cascade Alliance and the new Summit Union Catalog

April 2006First post-merger Strategic Planning Retreat

Fall 2008Migration from Summit INN-Reach to Summit

Navigator unfolds

Dec 2008Alliance membership reaches 36Summit Navigator goes into public production

Jan 2009INN-Reach shut down

Feb 2009Strategic Planning Retreat sets current

Alliance direction

Executive DirectorElectronic Resources Program MgrDigital Services Program MgrResource Sharing Program MgrNorthwest Digital Archives Program Mgr (.5

FTE)Training CoordinatorBusiness Mgr (Accounting & Courier

Program)Administrative Assistant

CouncilChief Administrative Officer from the main

library of each member institutionCouncil Executive Committee

7 elected Council members and Executive Director

University Librarian, Univ of Oregon

Standing CommitteesSummit Borrowing CommitteeSummit Catalog CommitteeCollection Development & Management

CommitteeNW Digital Archives Committee

1 representative from each member institution7-member Steering Team, appointed by

Council’s Executive Committee, guides work of each committee

Special Task Forces & Committees, e.g. ARL-ACRL Institute on Scholarly

CommunicationNorthwest Academic Library Directors

Symposium (NWALDS)RLSC Planning CommitteeMembership Task Force (2003-04)Summit Migration Implementation Team

(2008- )Membership & Governance Task Force (2008-

)

1. Summit Resource Sharing System Flagship Program – the most visible &

popular service 36 academic institutions in Oregon and

Washington 9.2 million unique titles, 28.7 million items All members use III Integrated Library

System INN-Reach 1993-2008 WorldCat Navigator 2009-

2. Courier Service 280 libraries served through 80 dropsites in

Oregon, Washington, & Idaho 400,000 packages per year

3. Electronic Resources 62 libraries in Oregon, Washington, Idaho,

Hawaii Databases, e-journals, e-books, etc.

4. Northwest Digital Archives 31 libraries and archives in Oregon,

Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Alaska EAD finding aids, union database, digital

content

5. Cooperative Collection Development YBP agreement Distributed Print Repository

6. Conferences & Workshops ARL/ACRL Institute on Scholarly

Communication Code4Lib Northwest

7. Digital Services Digital collections, institutional repositories,

etc.

Summit Fulfillments FY03 – FY08

Strategic Agendas, 2006 and 2009Cooperative Collection DevelopmentNext-Generation Systems: Co-Development

with OCLC on Navigator

1. Regional Library Services Center2. Cooperative Collection Development3. Digital Services Program4. Northwest Digital Archives 5. ARL/ACRL Institute on Scholarly

Communication 6. Next Generation Systems

Data HarvestingDiscovery: Aquabrowser, Encore, Endeca, Local

development, WorldCat Local, Primo, etc.Resource Sharing SystemsIntegrated Library Systems (ILS)

“Moving to the Network Level” – April 2006 Retreat

1. Regional Library Services Center2. Cooperative Collection Development3. Digital Services Program4. Northwest Digital Archives 5. ARL/ACRL Institute on Scholarly

Communication 6. Next Generation Systems

Data HarvestingDiscovery: Aquabrowser, Encore, Endeca, Local

development, WorldCat Local, Primo, etc.Resource Sharing SystemsIntegrated Library Systems (ILS)

“Moving to the Network Level” – April 2006 Retreat

Standing Committee established (Oct 2004)Distributed Print Repository developed and

implemented (2007-08)Agreement with YBP for group book purchase

discount and use of GOBI system for coordinated selection (2007-08)

Adoption by Council of Collection Development Vision Statement (Nov 2007)

Issued guidelines for Last Copy Designation for monographic material (Aug 2008)

New strategic objectives adopted by Council (Feb 2009)

(Adopted by Council, November 8, 2007)

“As an Alliance, we consider the combined collections of member institutions as one collection. While member institutions continue to acquire their own material, the Alliance is committed to cooperative collection development to leverage member institutions’ resources to better serve our users.”

(Outcomes of February 2009 Strategic Planning Retreat)

1.Cooperative Collection Development2.Regional Library Services3.Next Generation Catalog4.Collaborative Tech Services & Shared Staff5.Digital Initiatives

Commitment to higher levels of collaboration & resource-sharing in several dimensions

Extend shared monographic purchasing plan and coordinated selection using YBP

Set threshold for maximum number of copies purchased by member libraries

Share access and centrally fund e-book collections

Move acquisitions workflow to the network level

Identify and designate last copies -- journals and monographs -- for inclusion in the Distributed Print Repository or future service center

Establish subject selectors and system to build collections for the Alliance as a whole

Co-Development with OCLC on Navigator:The Convergence of Strategy, Challenge &

Opportunity

Participate in open source or web-scale library technology projects – e.g., Evergreen, WorldCat Local, OLE

Create single shared bibliographic database and inventory control system (aka catalog & circulation)

Develop, license, use shared discovery tools

DiscoveryOCLC Group Catalog on the WorldCat.org

platformOption for member libraries to acquire WorldCat

LocalDelivery

Navigator Request Engine based on Virtual Document eXchange (VDX)

New Functionality to be developed: III Circulation gateway; Item Availability; Streamlined workflow

Building an Integrated Solution

2006October: Strategic Agenda formalized

2007March: first board-level consideration of

WorldCatLocalNovember: accelerated investigation of

resource-sharing options

Changes in Relationship Between Alliance and III, 2007-2008

New Service/Support ModelFrom distributed to centrally hosted

New Pricing Model600% increase in annual fees

New Relationship ModelFrom consortium to individual library

2008March:

Board decision to work with OCLC on the development of a next generation technical platform for Summit.

Formation of Implementation Team and workgroups (Catalog, Circ & ILL, Technical, INN-Reach shut down)

October 15: first delivery of WorldCat NavigatorNovember: work out bugs, “train the trainer,” nine

regional training sessionsDecember 1: Summit moves from INN-Reach to

WCNavigator

2009 Stress test of system, staff, and workflows

under large volume of requesting; efforts at stabilizing load balancing (the Rota)

Implementation of additional features: Automated creation of temporary bibs/itemsImplementation of EZProxy-based user

authentication

Still to come:Tracking using item barcodeRenewals

Foster competition in the marketplaceCost effective Cross-platform Merging of ILL and circ workflowsSolution based on standards Strategic partnership with OCLC

Excellence in service to patrons Improved discovery systemMore trading partners, more materials availableContinuous improvement Increase in resource sharing

Paradigm ShiftLoss of Familiar FunctionalityPerceived AnnoyancesPerceived Benefits

Big shift from mature, integrated union catalog in which automated transactions were triggered by the simple scan of a barcode…

…to a new dynamic environment of a group catalog based on WorldCat …

…but one in which local catalogs no longer “know” another library’s collection or patrons…

…and in which formerly automated transactions must be performed in a more labor-intensive manner.

In the current staff workflow, there are more steps required for each transaction and each step takes longer to complete.

Temporary loss of the Renew functionTemporary loss and degradation of the Pick-

Up Anywhere functionTemporary loss and added complexity in the

Visiting Patron functionTemporary degradation of Summit Request

printingTo lending library, an item is now checked out

to another library and not to a specific patron

Local library necessity to implement or upgrade use of III Millennium Hold function in order to work in Navigator

Convergence of ILL and Summit lending, although invisible to patron, might be challenging at local library depending on extent to which these functions are independent or merged

Added complexity and time for the creation and updating of Patron Record Files

Lack of catalog-to-catalog communication and large search result sets mean patron might inefficiently activate a borrowing request from another library when home library has the item available on its shelf

Local-only catalog records in former Summit union catalog not in WorldCat-based union catalog, requiring local library Reclamation Projects

Ease of requesting journal volumes or issues from four large libraries who loan them has been complicated and lengthened to more resemble a typical ILL transaction

Because every search is by default a keyword search, loss of efficiency at known-item searching, a loss felt most by librarians and sophisticated searchers but probably less significant for many students

Large result sets might obscure the most pertinent item or delay its delivery

Extended Discovery experience with search results combining Alliance Group Catalog and all of WorldCat

Same access to holdings of Alliance member library collections

Same effective Delivery mechanism and timetable (courier service)

OCLC development staff highly responsive to problems

Opportunity for related development work with OCLC

Confirm or Re-establish Consortium’s Legal Status & RelationshipsOptions include:Become a regular administrative unit of

University of OregonClarify status to U of O as Unincorporated

AssociationEstablish a fully independent 501(c)3 not-for-

profit corporation

Strategic Developments in theOrbis Cascade Alliance

AJCU Library Deans Conference

Chicago, March 30, 2009

Presentation by John PopkoUniversity LibrarianSeattle University

With Major Contributions from John HelmerExecutive DirectorOrbis Cascade Alliance