Regional Library Services Center
Site Selection
Council unanimously approved the RLSC Leadership Group's site recommendation to build a shared facility at Linfield College. RLSC will house high-density storage as well as space for digitization projects. The recommendation also called for a Site Feasibility Study that the RLSC Leadership Group will oversee.
Collaborative Fundraising Meeting
The RLSC Leadership Group helped plan a Collaborative Fundraising Meeting that included library directors and development staff. Meeting topics included: fundraising goals, collaborative fundraising and institutional priorities, identifying potential funders, and exploring the possibility of an information session for foundations.
RLSC Leadership Group
The newly-formed RLSC Leadership Group met in person for the first time on May 24, 2006, at Linfield College. In addition to viewing the proposed building site, the group discussed site analysis, fundraising, bonding, potential space for digital services, and the Memorandum of Understanding.
Looking Ahead:
- Boora Architects, Inc. will have the first draft of the site analysis completed soon.
- The Collaborative Fundraising Group will continue work on fundraising and bonding.
- An MOU Working Group is discussing draft concepts for inclusion in the RLSC Memorandum of Understanding, a document that will address governance, ownership, and other legalities.
- With luck, we'll be designing RLSC in FY07 and building in FY08
In the News
Two recent articles featured the Orbis Cascade Alliance. Reprints of The Chronicle article are being used in conjunction with fundraising for RLSC:
- Wills, Eric. "Book by Book, College Libraries Pool Their Collected Wisdom." The Chronicle of Higher Education 52.21 (2006): B5-B6. <http://chronicle.com/weekly/v52/i21/21b00501.htm>
- Hoffert, Barbara. "The United Way." Library Journal (1 May 2006). <http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6328056.html&>
Courier
Transit Time Study
A system-wide courier transit time study was conducted in April. For four days, designated dropsites filled out blue tracking sheets that they inserted in every bag or package they sent via the courier. Approximately 5,000 tracking sheets were filled out. Thank you to everyone involved in the project!
Nancy Nathanson at the Alliance has analyzed the transit study data and prepared a detailed report. We're excited to highlight some great news: The average number of days a package was in transit was 1.7 days and 57% of packages were delivered on the next day!
Electronic Resources
Electronic Resources Committee
The Electronic Resources Committee (ERC) held their third annual meeting at GFU-Portland on April 21, 2006. Major agenda items included E-journal packages, E-books, and E-resource usage statistics. The ERC is currently working with the Collection Development & Management Committee (CDMC) to plan a joint meeting that will take place on October 6, 2006. A planning team comprised of members from both committees is working on organizing the event.
The ERC met in April at George Fox University to discuss e-books. The focus was on various issues faced by each member library as well as consortial possibilities in the area of e-books.
2005 in Review:
- 88 active resources
- 795 libraries on the 88 subscriptions
- 47 Nonmember libraries on the 88 subscriptions
- $2,501,161 billed to libraries (Alliance and Nonmembers)
- Estimated savings: $1.2 million
Program Highlights:
- E-Journal package proposals received from Wiley, Blackwell, and Cambridge
- Completed an Oxford E-Book purchase that involved 15 Alliance libraries and one ER Nonmember library.
- 5 trials started: Index of Christian Art, Xrefer, Humanities International, Historical Abstracts of the U.S., CQ Electronic Library
Summit
Hardware Upgrade
The Summit hardware migration on April 25th was completed in just over 8 hours. By early that evening it was apparent that holdings were not displaying in the catalog, and requesting was not working. Both of those problems were resolved the following morning, then it took several hours to work off the backlog of thousands of transactions that had been held since the previous day.
Over the next week, other problems were discovered: certain Summit Borrowing transactions were "stuck" leaving members to report individual problems to Innovative; Scoping for serials (journals, periodicals) wasn't working; and the Advanced Keyword Search index was incomplete so that search results were unreliable.
Most of the problems have been resolved, but Advanced Keyword searches may
not be returning complete results in all cases. We will work with Innovative to
schedule a major effort to re-build the index in June, when catalog use
decreases.
The long-anticipated software upgrade has been postponed until June. The most important problem this will fix is the display of hotlinks for records where the local site has a link only in a bibliographic record, with no item or checkin record(s) attached.
Summit Catalog Committee
The full Summit Catalog Committee (SCC) met for the first time at Lewis & Clark College on April 18th. After introductory remarks and an overview of committee work and communication, each SCC working group gave a presentation about their final report.
SCC members voted on the Working Group recommendations (Electronic Resources, Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records, and Internet Search Engines), and the Steering Team used the results to prepare a report that will be forwarded to Council in June after it is approved by the entire committee.
Summit Borrowing Committee
The Summit Borrowing Committee Steering Team is busy planning for Summit Borrowing Day and the next full committee meeting. They have been working on many important issues, including: short loan rule, patron confidentiality, just-in-time processing, and courier dropsite status.
Summit Borrowing Day 2006
Mark your calendars for Summit Borrowing Day 2006! It will take place on July 27 at WSU-Vancouver, followed by the full committee meeting and steering team meeting the next day. The Summit Borrowing Committee Steering Team is working on the program and recruiting presenters. A web page with information about online registration and hotel accommodations will be announced soon.
Statistics
The May Summit Borrowing statistics have been posted. Some highlights include:
- 31,333 requests
- 30,316 fulfillments
- Fulfillment rate: 97%
- Percentage of short loan requests: 7%
- Requests for items with 1 owning site: 25%
- Requests for items with 5 or more owning sites: 36%
Reducing Duplicate Records in Summit
As part of a continuing effort to reduce duplicates in Summit, Lewis & Clark College used local technology plus an OCLC-provided table to update their older WLN records with OCLC numbers. Over 39,000 records were changed as part of the project . We appreciate L&C's pioneering spirit on this project!
Council
Council Retreat
The Orbis Cascade Alliance Council met in retreat at the University of Washington on April 12-14, 2006. During this retreat, Council members heard from speakers Joan Lippincot and Lorcan 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, prioritized new initiatives, and made a first attempt at determining next steps.
There's much more to come, so stay tuned as Council refines plans for new activities.
Executive Committee
The Executive Committee met with all four steering teams on March 8, 2006. The joint meeting provided an opportunity for steering teams to present their annual reports, review various communication techniques, and benefit from other committees's perspectives while highlighting areas of possible collaboration.
The Steering Team annual reports have been posted on the web:
- Collection Development & Management Committee (CDMC)
- Electronic Resources Committee (ERC)
- Summit Borrowing Committee (SBC)
- Summit Catalog Committee (SCC)
At the Executive Committee's most recent meeting on May 25-26 in Aurora, Oregon, they evaluated retreat outcomes and outlined what steps should be taken next. They will recommend activities for Council at the July meeting. EC had a very full agenda and covered a variety of other topics, including membership criteria, the budget, and governance.
Collection Development & Management Committee
The Collection Development & Management Committee (CDMC) continues to be very active. They are working on an ambitious Pilot Project for a Distributed Print Repository whose goal is to create a distributed print archive of the paper backfiles of three widely-owned electronic journal packages: the American Chemical Society (ACS) journals, JSTOR Arts & Sciences I Journals, and the JSTOR Arts & Sciences II Journals.
The CDMC has distributed a survey that will identify consortium-level print holdings of the journal titles contained in the three packages named above. Twelve libraries have already completed the survey.
CDMC is also working with the Electronic Resources Committee to plan a joint meeting that will take place on October 6, 2006. A planning team comprised of members from both committees is working on organizing the event.
New Staff Member at the Alliance!
Susie Scroggins is the new Administrative Assistant at the Orbis Cascade Alliance central office. She joined the Alliance on March 13, 2006, and has already been communicating with many library staff members as she arranges meetings and handles courier issues. Welcome, Susie!
News Ideas?
What would you like to hear more about? Contact Michelle Williams with suggestions.