Students who regularly use the University of Idaho Library for research and information will soon have access to a larger catalog of items, thanks to its membership in the Orbis Cascade Alliance, a consortium of 37 academic libraries in Oregon, Washington and Idaho.
The membership was announced shortly after Thanksgiving last year, but benefits to students won’t be seen until closer to March, said Ben Hunter, UI head of cataloging and collections.
“The most immediate benefit that we will see is that the collections of those 36 other libraries are suddenly open in a very new way to us,” Hunter said, adding that the books are available through a quick, inexpensive courier service rather than Interlibrary Loan. “The net result to our patrons is faster delivery…longer borrowing times.”
In the long term, Hunter said a new catalog that will let students and faculty easily see items in these collections and UI’s library system is in the works. This integrated library system should be online within a year, although some technological hurdles — including computer catalog compatibility — still need to be addressed.
“I can say from experience — I went to graduate school in University of Oregon — it’s just huge to have this volume of physical resources opened up to you,” Hunter said. “. . . Being able to request them easily, get them in hand within a few days and check them out for weeks at a time. It’s a pretty amazing service.”
Hunter said requests for these materials will probably be handled through UI’s Interlibrary Loan service, but in the future patrons will be able to make requests in the catalog as they now can for North Idaho College and Lewis and Clark State College materials.
UI is the first Idaho library to join the consortium. While UI has partnered with the Alliance before, this membership gives UI a committee seat for policy decisions.
“The University of Idaho is excited about the Alliance’s vision of shared services and a unified Northwest academic library collection,” said Lynn Baird, UI dean of library services.
Hunter said this Alliance is part of a new trend for academic libraries, away from the traditional model of single entities to one of networked, collaborative entities which share resources. This allows them to save money and more efficiently spend the limited funds in this time of economic woes.
“Entering into this large consortium we get better prices on a lot of our electronic products,” Hunter said. “We’re able to partner with other institutions of the Alliance to get better prices.”
Hunter said research databases, streaming music archives, ebooks and other electronic resources form a significantly larger portion of the budget than physical books and journals.
Collaborative catalog building, which Hunter said is hotly debated but a direction the Alliance is “moving toward,” is another area of benefit to UI and the other involved organizations.
The only obstacle to this is getting on a shared purchasing and cataloging system, which Hunter said he envisions happening within the next few years.
Basically, this means that book purchases are coordinated with other libraries to ensure money is spent wisely. If a particular book is raised as a purchase suggestion for UI, but 10 copies already exist in other member libraries, then UI will not purchase that book, using the same money to buy other volumes.
So, given all these benefits, what is the cost to UI?
“We do pay membership fees,” Hunter said, which are not yet nailed down. “We did the math and these are offset by the gain from membership.”
As UI is now a governing member of the Alliance, extra travel expenses will be incurred by the dean and head librarians to attend meetings. However, Hunter said having this say is very important.
“The upside is, (membership) helps extend our influence and our circle of friends to this larger group and to get outside of just the North Idaho region.”