SHARES ILL Practitioners Council

Note: The work of the SHARES ILL Practitioners Council has been completed and the group has been disbanded.

The purpose of the ILL Practitioners Council was to strengthen the sense of community, shared purpose, effectiveness, and opportunity within SHARES. It focused on needs and contributions of front-line ILL staff at SHARES institutions. The Practitioners Council was charged to:

• Strengthen the sense of community and shared purpose within SHARES by increasing practitioners' awareness of the program's policies and guidelines, promoting buddy systems and regional meetings, highlighting achievements of effective SHARES members, and soliciting feedback on policy, initiative, and training issues.
• Monitor performance indicators of SHARES participants (such as turnaround time and reasons for negative responses) and make recommendations to the SHARES Executive Group for follow-up action.
• Serve as an advocacy committee for SHARES ILL practitioners, fielding complaints about un-SHARES-like behavior, suggestions for alteration of SHARES policies or guidelines, or any complaints about the OCLC Research Library Partnership, and making recommendations for action to the SHARES Executive Group.
• Take a leading role in organizing the twice-yearly SHARES ILL Practitioners meetings at American Library Association conferences.
• Give more SHARES ILL practitioners (including non-librarians with administrative ILL duties) an opportunity to participate in the access partnership on a broader, more visible level.

Seven to twelve SHARES participants from general and special members (at least one from outside the US) were elected by their peers and served for two years.

OCLC Research staff liaison:
Dennis Massie
Program Officer
dennis_massie@oclc.org