Council Retreat 2006

The Orbis Cascade Alliance Council met in retreat on April 12-14, 2006. During this retreat Council members heard form speakers Joan Lippicott and Locan Dempsey, explored environmental forces that are shaping libraries, discussed campus priorities, identified issues and trends relevant to strategic directions for the consortium, noted those already underway (e.g., Regional Library Services Center), prioritized potential new initiatives, and made a first attempt at a determining next steps for the most popular new initiatives.

Executive Committee refined this information, consulted with Council in July, and forwarded an Alliance Strategic Agenda for Council revision and approval in October 2006. This summary page brings together the various discussion documents considered during this process and will be updated with information about specific initiatives as they take shape over the coming months.

Alliance Strategic Agenda (October 2006)

Strategic Agenda
Timeline (Appendix A)
NWDA Proposal & Budget (Appendix E)

Strategic Initiatives and Projects (April 12-14, 2006 Council Retreat)

Regional Library Services Center

Endorsement of current RLSC Leadership Group activity.

Cooperative Collection Development

Endorsement of current Collection Development and Management Committee activity with an added charge to develop a capability for statistical analysis of collections (aka "data-mining Summit").

Moving Services to the Network Level

"Moving services to the network level" is an intentional strategy for sharing risk and improving services and efficiency by working at appropriate collective levels. Possible new initiatives include

• offering services and collections together rather than separately
• allocating financial and human resources at a collective level
• collective pursuit of R&D
• providing shared access to expertise
• moving IT systems from a local to a network or shared level. As a specific example, there was some interest in a long-range project to investigate a successor to current ILS systems. For example, members might share a single system; perhaps that system will be a network application (as opposed to a local system) and offer new or revised features.
• article requesting

Infrastructure for Digital Initiatives

This is a new initiative but includes development of current collaborations with NorthWest Academic Computing Consortium (NWACC) and Northwest Digital Archives (NWDA).

Information Literacy

Interest in a consortial approach to information literacy. Shared teaching and learning materials and methods; embedding information literacy in the curriculum. Possible interest in hosting the ACRL Information Literacy Institute for Orbis Cascade Alliance librarians, or, hosting a similar program.

New Summit search interface

Development of a "next generation" Summit search interface that continues to connect users to the requesting function of INN-Reach.

Background

Retreat evaluation

Pre-retreat survey results

Retreat agenda (with links to transcripts of notes and flip-charts)

Participants

Pre-retreat readings

Guest speakers

Orbis Cascade Alliance