Online resource sharing turns 30!

“Libraries report considerably higher success in obtaining interlibrary loans than with former manual techniques and also report that the time for obtaining loans has been cut in half.”

So wrote OCLC Founder Frederick G. Kilgour in the 1978/79 OCLC Annual Report. He was describing the impact that the OCLC Interlibrary Loan (ILL) subsystem was having on libraries following its introduction in 1979.

Today, 30 years later, OCLC continues to save libraries both time and money as they arrange interlibrary loans and share resources locally, regionally, nationally and internationally. Since 1979, libraries have submitted 204 million online interlibrary loan requests through OCLC.

And resource sharing continues to grow. In fiscal 2009, there were 10,179 institutions that used OCLC to submit 10.2 million ILL requests. Message traffic was increasingly international, with over 94,000 requests coming in to U.S. libraries from 29 countries, and U.S. libraries sending out over 85,000 requests to 42 countries.

Over the years, OCLC has continually enhanced its resource sharing capabilities. In 1995, we introduced the ILL Fee Management (IFM) service, which helped libraries reduce administrative costs by tracking and reconciling interlibrary loan charges. In the last 14 years, libraries have used IFM to process 8.1 million transactions, at a savings estimated at $486 million.

Another major enhancement to OCLC’s resource sharing services occurred in 2000, when we began distributing OCLC ILLiad Resource Sharing Management software, which was developed by Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) and maintained by Atlas Systems. This software automates routine interlibrary loan functions and provides sophisticated tracking statistics to library staff. OCLC now provides a hosted version of ILLiad. We continue to work with Atlas Systems to improve the software, and version 8.0 is coming soon.

In 2007, we conducted the WorldCat Delivery pilot with 12 libraries in Montana, in which users could generate requests for library-held items via the library’s local system, WorldCat Resource Sharing or ILLiad. Users could ask to have the items delivered directly to their homes and could return the items in enclosed, specially designed mailers.

The Montana pilot helped inform development of a new Resource Sharing offering that OCLC will introduce in the near future. WorldCat Direct will ship materials from a book supplier (Better World Books) directly to library users at the point of need when requested through OCLC WorldCat Resource Sharing or ILLiad. Both libraries and users will benefit from this streamlining of the discovery and delivery processes.

This year, we launched WorldCat Navigator, a new service that provides seamless resource sharing within a library consortium and beyond. The Orbis Cascade Alliance was the first group to go live with WorldCat Navigator. It brings together into a single interface the WorldCat Group Catalog on the WorldCat.org platform, VDX and integration with WorldCat Resource Sharing. Consortium libraries are able to manage requests via the Navigator Request Engine, which incorporates circulation integration with each library’s circulation system for unmediated requesting within the consortium. This initiative is an important part of our strategy to move library services to the network level.

OCLC is also working with IDS Project staff at Milne Library, SUNY Geneseo, to transform the IDS (Information Delivery Service) Project’s Article Licensing Information Availability Service (ALIAS) from a local, unmediated article service to a network-level solution serving more than 10,000 libraries worldwide. Atlas Systems is also involved in this project, which will use holdings data and license management tools to develop an integrated resource sharing solution for serials in any format. By integrating data from WorldCat and electronic resource knowledge bases and combining it with license management data, OCLC delivery services will offer automated processing for fulfillment of nonreturnable materials.

Finally, WorldCat Resource Sharing has recently set up an online community using WebJunction. This new portal will let resource sharing librarians connect with each other to share interests and experiences.

OCLC Resource Sharing enters its 31st year with a renewed commitment to helping libraries work together to improve services and reduce costs. Clearly, the OCLC cooperative has a proud tradition of sharing resources, and the future is bright indeed!

Jay Jordan
OCLC President and Chief Executive Officer

Contents | The Ripple Effect