Application
2005 NWACC Excellence Award
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Application |
The Orbis Cascade Alliance requests consideration for the 2005 NWACC Excellence Award in the categories of regional leadership and emerging practices.
John F. Helmer
Executive Director
jhelmer@uoregon.edu
(541) 346-1835
Pat Kelley
Chair, Council of library directors
Dean of Libraries and Chief Information Officer, EWU
pkelley@ewu.edu
(509) 359-2264Louise Newswanger
Chair, Summit Borrowing Committee
Public Services Librarian, George Fox University
lnewswanger@georgefox.edu
503-554-2413John F. Helmer
Executive Director
jhelmer@uoregon.edu
(541) 346-1835Nancy Nathanson
Systems Manager
nnathans@uoregon.edu
(541) 346-1860
The Orbis Cascade Alliance is a library consortium composed of 31 public and private colleges, community colleges, and universities in Oregon and Washington. The Alliance provides a range of services to member libraries, and to other libraries in the region. Chief among these are the Summit union catalog, Summit Borrowing, electronic resource purchasing (ejournals, ebooks, databases), and courier service.
Regional leadership: merger of Orbis and Cascade
Member colleges and universities demonstrated regional leadership and attracted international attention through their decision to merge two previous consortia to form the Orbis Cascade Alliance. Although it is often clear that combining resources would yield improvements in service and reductions in cost, consortia remain separated by factors such as political boundaries, funding sources, and differing membership criteria. The members of Orbis and Cascade overcame these divisions and created an organization that includes Oregon & Washington, private & public, two-year & four-year, and very large through very small academic institutions. The resulting organization has a membership of 31 institutions, serves more than 90% of the four-year students in the two states, and continues to grow.
This successful merger has attracted the attention of groups working to combine forces in regions as diverse as California, New York, Colorado, Spain, and the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden). The Alliance's unique accomplishment among library consortia generated an invitation to speak at the 6th European Meeting of the International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC) meeting in Barcelona, Spain.
Emerging practices: creation of Summit
The first accomplishment of merger was the creation of Summit, itself a technological merger of two pre-existing union catalog systems. Prior to merger, each of these systems provided access to the holdings of a distinct group of libraries. Cascade brought together the six public baccalaureate institutions of Washington while Orbis united 20 private and public institutions in Oregon and Washington. Each system included about 10 million records for books, journals, sound recording, DVD's, etc. at member libraries and, operating separately, they were very popular systems used to deliver thousands of items each year. Both systems were based on INN-Reach software developed by Innovative Interfaces Inc. (III). Although III has 14 such systems deployed internationally, they had never been approached by consortia wishing to merge two INN-Reach systems. Alliance member library staff, consortium staff, and III worked over a remarkably short time to develop technical and workflow solutions that made it possible to combine two heavily used systems with very minimal service interruption.
Organizational merger was accomplished in April and Summit was launched just six months later in October 2003. At launching Summit provided the equivalent of 180,000 full-time students with access to 22 million items owned by 27 member institutions across two states. In addition to handling the administration and technology behind Summit, the Alliance also provides fast and inexpensive physical delivery through its courier program. The Alliance courier service now serves more than 240 libraries through 61 dropsites in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. When the powerful and easy-to-use search capabilities of Summit were paired with fast delivery, the resulting service, Summit Borrowing, quickly became an outstanding success.
The impact of combining these two systems was remarkable to witness. Prior to merger, Orbis and Cascade separately loaned a total of 201,000 items per year. After the creation of Summit, that number rose to 266,000.
Total borrowing increased by 34 percent independent of growth in collections or membership.
Commitment to Collaboration
Although the underlying technology of Summit plays an important role, it is the strong commitment of diverse and independent member institutions that forms the foundation of the Orbis Cascade Alliance's success. This commitment is evident in many forms, including the creation of long-term resource sharing agreements, the empowerment of students and faculty to borrow directly, the willingness to travel and engage in the work of governing a consortium, and the recurring allocation of significant financial and human resources. As the Alliance moves forward, member institutions are committed to building scholarly information resources based on the long-term assurance of shared access to each member's collection. Chief among the Alliance's new ventures is planning for the construction of the Regional Library Services Center, a shared high-density storage facility and home for collaborative projects.
Benefits: Who are the beneficiaries of the practice and in what ways are educational, research, or institutional goals advanced by the practice?
More than 200,000 students, faculty and staff of member institutions are the primary beneficiaries of the services provided by the Orbis Cascade Alliance. As of late 2004, 74% of Alliance members are also members of NWACC and 74% of NWACC members are also members of the Alliance. More on membership overlap.
Benefits to research and education
The Alliance has significantly benefited research, graduate and undergraduate education at member institutions through highly effective programs that facilitate large-scale sharing of print resources and greatly expand access to ejournals, ebooks, and databases.
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. The convenient, expanded access is great."
-- Michael Tandy, a student at Seattle Pacific UniversityMember institutions report an improved ability to attract and retain faculty due to the availability of information resources that support a broader range of research interests.
“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”
-- Ron Swisher, Chair, Natural Sciences Department, Oregon Institute of Technology"Summit allows me to maintain currency in my discipline in a way that interlibrary loan never could. I feel as though I have a doctoral institution's library at my fingertips! Thanks for providing this wonderful professional development resource.
-- Judy Zimmerman, Instructor, Psychology & Women's Studies, Portland Community CollegeSummit is invaluable to me and my colleagues ... AHS conducts archaeological and historical surveys in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana to assist governmental agencies in compliance with federal historic preservation laws. The written reports we produce ... include historical background information for the area surveyed, environmental context information, and explanations of any cultural materials/features located during the survey. The turn-around time ... is often very tight and that is where Summit comes in: I check the EWU catalog and order ... through Summit before I leave for a survey or, if time is extremely short, while I'm in the field. Then, by the time I return ... the books are here. They generally arrive within 1-3 days, which never ceases to amaze me. What a wonderful service! EWU has a good collection, but Summit ties us into 25 or more additional academic libraries. There is rarely a book I need that I can't find on Summit. We at AHS are able to turn out much better reports thanks to this service. I am a fan!
-- Ann Sharley-Hubbard, Archaeologist/Historian, Archaeological and Historical Services, Eastern Washington UniversityLarge research institutions also gain from association with regional partners. 65% of the materials in Summit are unique: owned by only one member of the consortium. Thus, institutions large and small benefit from access to a distributed regional collection of research material. Beyond local collections, Summit provides access to the collections of the Center for Research Libraries (CRL). Students and faculty use Summit to request items which are then sent from CRL's Chicago headquarters via second-day UPS.
“Even students and faculty at a large institution gain from the creation of Summit. 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.”
-- Betsy Wilson, library director at the University of Washington.
Costs: What resources are invested in the practice and is the practice cost-effective?
Cost savings are among the chief motivations for forming the Orbis Cascade Alliance. Examples of cost savings include
Summit Borrowing
Summit Borrowing is much less expensive than traditional interlibrary loan (ILL). Summit simplifies searching, automates authentication, distributes requests among institutions, sorts requests for maximum efficiency, and removes the need for library staff to serve as intermediaries. Workflows and technology are integrated with circulation and almost all labor can be performed by student staff.
Several Alliance members recently participated in a cost study conducted by the Association of Research Libraries. The results of that study demonstrated cost savings of 79% for borrowing and 50% for lending via Summit as compared to traditional interlibrary loan.* In addition, delivery time has been cut by 72%. Summit has clearly proven to be an outstanding tool from the perspective of both service and cost.
Although Summit Borrowing is clearly cost effective, it is much more than an economical form of ILL. Summit Borrowing puts the user in control of borrowing while simultaneously speeding up and simplifying the process of searching for scholarly information. As a result, Summit has tapped in to a largely untouched market for resource sharing: undergraduates. Although undergraduates are infrequent users of ILL, they comprise 50% of the use of Summit, generating more than 130,000 requests in FY04.
* Jackson, Mary E. Assessing ILL/DD Services: New Cost-Effective Alternatives. Annapolis Junction: ARL, 2004
Group purchase of electronic resources
Alliance members collectively save 10%-45% over list price on ejournals, ebooks, and databases purchased through the Alliance. Such group discounts allow member libraries to purchase a broader range of scholarly information in support of research and learning.
Courier service
The Alliance courier service provided next-day delivery of more than 260,000 packages in FY05. The performance of shipping as been enhanced and the cost greatly reduced through standardized packaging and labeling and fixed rate pricing.
Membership fees
The Orbis Cascade Alliance exists, in part, to exploit economies of scale. The recent merger that formed the Alliance lead to an average reduction in membership fees of 13%. Aggregating the knowledge and purchasing power of a larger group of libraries has improved services, opened up new avenues for collaboration, and reduced costs.
Replicability: To what extent can the practice serve as a model for other institutions?
The Alliance's merger experience is highly replicable both within the United States and internationally. Requests for information concerning merger of the organization and/or union catalog have been received from consortia in California, New York, Colorado, Spain (Andalusia and Catalunya), and the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden).
Innovation: In what way(s) does the practice represent a step forward in the use, support, or creation of information technology?
The Alliance and III developed a particularly effective technical model for merging INN-Reach systems while minimizing the impact on service. Aspects of this model are currently being used for a merger in Colorado and are under consideration in other regions.
Orbis Cascade Alliance
Member institutions
"Staffhome" page for member library staff
Summit
Summit Borrowing: Statistics | Committee | Policies
Pre-merger statistics: Cascade | Orbis
NWACC & Alliance membership overlap
Last updated: January 24, 2005
