NEWS RELEASE
For immediate
release
October 1, 2003
Summit Launched:
22 Million
Books available to 180,000 Students and Faculty
Orbis Cascade Alliance
announces the launch of Summit, a powerful new Web resource offering
information on more than 22 million books and other materials owned by
university and college libraries in Oregon and Washington. This remarkable
service is the first product of an innovative new library consortium serving
more than 180,000 faculty and students from 27 member institutions. Summit is
freely available on the Web at summit.orbiscascade.org. In addition, direct
borrowing is available to students and faculty at member institutions.
“Summit offers college students and faculty one-stop shopping for library materials,” said John F. Helmer, executive director of Orbis Cascade Alliance. “The Summit catalog brings together in one place an incredible wealth of library materials at universities and colleges throughout the region. It is a remarkable achievement created by a diverse grass-roots coalition of public and private institutions over a two-state region.” Orbis Cascade Alliance currently includes every public four-year university and college in Oregon and Washington, 11 private colleges and two community colleges. Additional colleges and community colleges are planned for inclusion in 2004.
Students find that Summit greatly simplifies their work by combining many library catalogs in a single search and by making it easy to request materials via the Web. "With Summit, I can order books from all over the Northwest from my own computer and pick them up in two days" says Michael Tandy, a student at Seattle Pacific University. "The convenient, expanded access is great."
“As a science instructor, Summit is absolutely invaluable to me in providing rapid access to a large variety of information resources and I am very grateful for its existence. Summit and the Orbis Cascade Alliance make a real difference to faculty at a small college,” said Ron Swisher, head of the natural sciences department at Oregon Institute of Technology in Klamath Falls.
“Even students and faculty at a large institution gain from the creation of Summit,” stated Betsy Wilson, library director at the University of Washington. “Although UW has a library collection of over 6 million volumes, no one institution can collect everything of interest to students and faculty. Our patrons find additional copies of high-demand titles in Summit as well as unique items at other libraries, big and small.” More than half of the 22 million items in Summit are unique, owned by only one of the member libraries.
Orbis and Cascade announced their merger and intent to create Summit in late 2002. The Summit system is a “union catalog” compiling information over the Internet from several library catalogs, and is based on INN-Reach software developed by Innovative Interfaces, Inc., of Emeryville, California. In addition to Summit, the Orbis Cascade Alliance offers a number of advantages to member libraries. For example, as an aid to quick delivery of borrowed items, the consortium administers a courier service providing daily pick-up and delivery of library materials at 60 libraries in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. Orbis Cascade Alliance also supports a cooperative purchase program for databases, electronic journals, electronic books, and other digital library material. This program allows libraries to afford a much broader range of Web-based information resources. In addition, the Orbis Cascade Alliance sponsors conferences, seminars, and workshops for library staff.
“The libraries of Orbis Cascade Alliance are very proud to offer this new service,” said Deb Carver, chair of the consortium and university librarian at the University of Oregon. “After a decade of working together informally, it is a great pleasure to bring about the merger of Orbis and Cascade and to launch a new and much larger union catalog. Summit is a critical component of the services we offer and the Orbis Cascade Alliance is a remarkable example of what can be achieved through the collaboration of public and private institutions.”
Along with Central Oregon Community College, Portland Community College is the second community college to join the Orbis Cascade Alliance. “Portland Community College is excited to be the newest member of the consortium,” said Leslie Riester, library director at PCC. “In 2004, when the technical work to include PCC in Summit is complete, our students taking credit classes will have access to an amazing array of resources drawn from research collections throughout the region.”
“Summit provides quick and easy access to a remarkably varied library collection distributed across a huge region,” said Nancy Nathanson, systems manager at the Orbis Cascade Alliance. “The creation of the Orbis Cascade Alliance and launch of Summit represent a great step forward for teaching, learning, and research in Oregon and Washington.”
Member
Institutions of the Orbis Cascade Alliance
|
Central Oregon Community College |
Reed College |
|
Central Washington University |
Seattle Pacific University |
|
Eastern Oregon University |
Southern Oregon University |
|
Eastern Washington University |
The Evergreen State College |
|
George Fox University |
University of Oregon |
|
Lewis and Clark College |
University of Portland |
|
Linfield College |
University of Puget Sound |
|
Marylhurst University |
University of Washington |
|
Oregon Health & Science University |
Washington State University |
|
Oregon Institute of Technology |
Western Oregon University |
|
Oregon State University |
Western Washington University |
|
Pacific University |
Whitman College |
|
Portland Community College |
Willamette University |
|
Portland State University |
|
Contacts for more
information
|
John F. Helmer Executive Director Orbis Cascade Alliance 541.346.1835 |
Deb Carver Chair Orbis Cascade Alliance 541.346.1892 |