ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


366 / C&RL News

F o u r paradigm s fo r sharing 
library reso u rces

B y  M arian R itte r

Music Librarian
W estern W ashington University

Current levels o f service can be maintained only 
through cooperation.

C ooperative collection development is an important partial solution to the dilemma o f rising inflation and declining revenues. Alt
resource sharing can never substitute for building 
core library collections, it holds enormous promise 
as a means to acquire access to very expensive 
items, especially ones that are infrequently used. 
Four variants of resource sharing— three in the 
Pacific Northwest and one in the San Francisco 
Bay area— suggest strategies for distributing acqui­
sitions coverage among libraries. It is only by such 
cooperation that current levels of service can be 
maintained, let alone improved, in a fiscal climate 
that shows no sign of becoming more favorable.

In 1983, six university libraries in Washington 
state negotiated a shared-purchase contract for 
The Eighteenth Century Collection, a microfilm 
collection being published in units that cost 
$175,430 for a standing order. The Washington 
universities adopted an agreement required of the 
University of California system by the California 
legislature. Under these terms, the six libraries are 
bound by a written agreement and payment sched­
ule. According to the contract, the Eighteenth 
Century Collection will be purchased from Re­
search Publications by the University of Washing­
ton in Seattle. The Collection will be housed per­
manently as part of the microforms collection at the 
University of Washington Libraries in Seattle. 
Normally, all units issued annually will be pur­

h

chased as they are produced. I f  budgetary con­
straints at the University o f Washington require a 

oreugduction h in levels of purchase, the university will 
consult with the other participating institutions to 
select a suitable level o f purchase. The University 
o f Washington will bill each participating library 
10% of the annual purchase price each year. If 
budgetary constraints at a participating institution 
require it to reduce its level of support, that institu­
tion will consult with the University of Washington 
(which will consult with other participants if appro­
priate) to make the necessary adjustment. This may 
include a change in level of participation or in level 
of total purchase.

Requests by users from participating institutions 
for material from the collection in Seattle will re­
ceive priority handling. Loan charges will be 
waived. The number of reels loaned on a single 
request will be six, or twice the number usually 
permitted for a single transaction. Materials will be 
sent and returned by first class mail or by other 
quick delivery methods agreed upon by the partiei - 
pants. When materials being used by one partici­
pant are needed by another, the interlibrary loan 
librarians will negotiate to find a way to satisfy both 
users. This may involve temporary recall within a 
library to duplicate short items (50 pages or less), 
making a free printout (up to 50 pages) for the 
second requestor by the first library using the 
material, short-term return of materials, or another



June 1991 / 367

solution. A record will be kept of occasions of dual 
need and the solutions that were devised, so that an 
evaluation of the success o f the cooperative acqui­
sition can be made. Extended loan periods will be 
available as needed by users from participating 
libraries. Use of the E ighteenth Century Collection 
by non-participating libraries will be restricted, and 
in all cases, material will be subject to immediate 
recall by a participating library.

Another experiment in resource sharing is the 
Pacific Northwest Canadian Studies Consortium 
(PNCSC), inaugurated in 1990. Twenty-one uni­
versities may eventually be involved in the PNCSC, 
which so far includes the U niversity of Washington, 
the University o f Oregon, Gonzaga University, 
Lewis and Clark College, Washington State Uni­
versity, and Western Washington University. Un­
like the project to acquire the E ighteenth Century 
C ollection, this is a consortium of universities 
rather than libraries. Western Washington Univer­
sity and the University of Washington are currently 
working on a union list of serials about Canada, 
with programming being done at the latter institu­
tion. It is hoped that other libraries in the consor­
tium universities will want to add their Canadian 
periodical holdings to the list.

A third project in the Pacific Northwest, also in 
its beginning stages, is the Northwest Regional 
Consortium for Southeast Asian Studies, which 
brings together the University of British Columbia, 
the University of Washington, and the University of 
Oregon. With the assistance of grants from the 
Ford Foundation and the Luce Foundation, librar­
ies at these institutions are coordinating collection 
development o f Southeast Asian materials, with 
each university accepting a specific responsibility. 
Oregon will emphasize material from the Philip­
pines, the University of British Columbia will focus 
on Indonesia, and the University of Washington 
will emphasize mainland Southeast Asia, especially 
Thailand, Indochina, and Malaysia. An operating 
agreement has now been completed to govern this 
new arrangement for coordinated collection devel­
opment.

An important prerequisite for all cooperative 
projects is efficient exchange and delivery systems. 
In the Pacific Northwest, a number oflibraries are 
already linked to the University of Washington 
Libraries in Seattle via a regular courier service. 
They include the libraries of Western Washington 
University and the Boeing and Weyerhaeuser 
companies, the Seattle Public Library, and the 
King County Library System. In addition, a jointly 
funded arrangement between the University of 
Washington Libraries and the library o f the Uni­
versity of British Columbia provides for a weekly 
commercial service to transport materials between 
the two institutions as well as other libraries located 
in the metropolitan areas o f Seattle and Vancouver,

British Columbia. Within Washington state, there 
is also a Washington Network (State Ground Cou­
rier Services).

Effective delivery services are also needed to 
address one o f the thorniest budget problems aca­
demic libraries have: the spiralling cost of periodi­
cals. Western Washington University, for example, 
spends 75% o f its acquisitions budget for subscrip­
tion items— serials and continuations. The prob­
lem is nationwide in scope and has been a topic of 
discussion for several years. It seems obvious that 
representatives from universities in close proximity 
should try to cooperate to make serials available to 
their patrons. Logically, each library should main­
tain a core collection and, beyond this, participate 
in an interinstitutional arrangement to access less 
basic or less frequently used serials. O f course, 
copyright and fair use questions must be settled

The Copyright Clearance C enter 
…  instantly conveys limited 

rights to distribute copies in small 
quantities at reasonable fees.

before this can work.
The Bay Area Serials Cooperative, modeled on a 

similar project in the state o f N ew York, is one effort 
to come to grips with the serials dilemma. It brings 
together the libraries of California State University 
at Hayward, San Francisco State University, and 
San Jose State University. The immediate goals of 
the project are to ensure local availability of serials 
important to the programs of the three participat­
ing institutions, to maintain core collections of 
essential materials in each library, to assure prompt 
access to shared materials through augmented 
document delivery systems, to free resources to 
meet demands for new materials, and to increase 
the range of unique serial titles held among the 
three libraries.

The three participants worked for over a year to 
develop the project, during which the first round of 
cancellations was completed. In the first round 
(during 1989), only journals costing at least $1,000 
annually were considered. A list of journals was 
compiled, designating the university that was obli­
gated to keep a subscription. Each title on this list 
o f expensive journals was retained by at least one 
library, which agreed to supply the other two with 
tables o f contents of each issue of a cancelled 
journal. A two-day turnaround for requested mate­
rials was established. Information programs were 
developed, to explain to faculty and students why 
expensive and seldom-used titles were being



368 / C&RL News

cancelled: monies saved would enable libraries to 
maintain core materials and avoid major cancella­
tion cycles in the future. Faculties were polled 
regarding their serials priorities. I f  faculty protest 
was not received by a designated date, subscrip­
tions were cancelled.

The project is still in its early stages, but it has 
accomplished the following thus far: (1) each li­
brary has purchased a fax machine to speed inter- 
library loan delivery; (2) the staffs of the interli­
brary loan departments have met to develop proce­
dures to handle the increased volume of interli­
brary loans efficiently; (3) collection development 
and serials librarians have begun the process of 
working out details concerning particular serial and 
periodical titles; and (4) the institutions have joined 
the Copyright Clearance Center to meet copyright 
and fair use regulations. (The non-profit Copyright 
Clearance Center, Inc., was created in 1977 in ac­
cordance with the Copyright Act of 1976, sections 
107 and 108 o f which allow restricted photocopy­
ing o f copyrighted material. The Copyright Clear­

ance Center manages a central photocopy permis­
sions and fee system; it does not make photocopies. 
It instantly conveys limited rights to distribute 
copies in small quantities at reasonable fees.)

The Bay Area program is one o f the options for 
dealing with the acquisitions crisis being studied in 
California. The Chancellor’s office that admini­
sters the 20 campuses of the California State Uni­
versity system is considering major changes in in- 
terlibrary loan procedures, based on heavy use of 
fax.

Music librarians, who have lagged other collec­
tion development managers in creating networks, 
would be particularly well advised to study coop­
erative projects such as the ones described here, as 
they search for means to acquire the extremely 
costly yet necessary items and collections that their 
institutions require. O f special interest is the prom­
ise that resource sharing holds for the acquisition of 
expensive European music journals, items that—  
while lightly used— are nonetheless essential to the 
work o f faculty and advanced students. ■  ■

Beauty and truth: Sigma Xi’s 1 9 9 0  annual m eeting

Sigma Xi’s 1990 annual meeting, held October 
26-2 7  at Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, 
was an excellent illustration of Natalie S. King’s 
point that librarians could learn a great deal from 
scientists about making effective presentations 
(“Letters,” C &R L  News, March 1991). “Dimen­
sions of Beauty in Science” was the theme selected 
by the scientific research honor society. The goal of 
the program was to explore the beauty o f science 
from the atomic to the cosmic, and the 13 non­
concurrent and nonoverlapping presentations pro­
vided an excellent, well-organized overview from a 
single sequence of accomplished researchers on 
the 13 topics included in the program.

Most o f the researchers took advantage of the 
meeting’s theme to prepare and deliver a multime­
dia, full-color presentation of their subject. Techni­
cal assistance was provided on a grandiose scale: 
television monitors and video and slide projection 
on three giant screens made possible simultaneous 
access to breathtaking colorful vistas, extending 
from cosmic overviews, such as “Beauty on the 
Planetary Scale: A Summary of What Has Been 
Learned Through Remote Sensing of the Planets” 
to the microscopic world of cells in butterflies’ 
wings.

The meeting closed with a most attention-grab­
bing presentation by the winner of Sigma Xi’s 1990 
Procter Prize for Scientific Achievement: Robert 
D. Ballard, Director of the Center for Marine 
Exploration, Woods Hole Oceanographic Insti­
tute, who showed spectacular underwater photo­
graphs and talked about “Beauty in the Depths of 
the Ocean.”

We recommend that librarians libingnear Wash­
ington, D.C., attend the 1991 Annual Sigma Xi 
Meeting (probably to be held on a Friday and 
Saturday in October). I f  1991’s presentations are as 
well organized as 1990’s, you’ll be impressed by 
how much you’ll learn at the meeting (about con­
tent and presentation), which is scarcely advertised 
beyond a mention in the editorial pages o f the 
Sigma Xi’s banner publication, A m erican Scientist. 
The low registration fee ($25 in 1990) should en­
courage anyone interested in knowing the current 
forefront o f research in 10 to 15 disciplines— or 
seeing state-of-the-art techniques o f presenta­
tion— to attend and bring students, as many aca­
demics in North Carolina did.— D anielle M ihram, 
H ead, R eferen ce D epartm ent, D oheny M em orial 
L ib rary, University o f  Southern C alifornia, a n d  G. 
A rthur M ihram , P.O. Box 1188, Princeton, NJ 
08542 ■  ■



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