resource sharing in a cloud computing age

Resource sharing in a cloud computing ageMatt Goldner

OCLC, Inc., Dublin, Ohio, USA

Katie BirchOCLC (UK) Ltd, Sheffield, UK

AbstractPurpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the historical development of interlibrary loan, identify key milestones such as thecodification of ILL practices and development of new technologies to facilitate those practices, and assess the impact that changes in technology andpublishing are having upon resource sharing in the digital age.Design/methodology/approach – The authors conduct an extensive historical review of global developments in resource sharing and then conduct aPEST analysis of societal factors affecting present day resource sharing.Findings – Resource sharing continues to grow but there is a need to work together to find solutions to problems of distributed knowledge bases,incompatible systems, and electronic formats which often prohibit sharing of materials between libraries. Librarians must work with publishers,politicians, and systems developers to ensure that there is the same or equivalent rights to electronic materials as there is to print publications and thatresource sharing systems can support new models of sharing and acquiring materials in multiple formats.Originality/value – This paper provides a global perspective on the challenges of library resource sharing in the digital age.

Keywords Interlibrary loan, Interlending, Resource sharing, Cloud computing, Electronic document delivery, Change management

Paper type Viewpoint

As we look at the history of interlibrary loans (ILL) aroundthe world, it is apparent we are in a time of great challenges

and opportunities. What started originally as a serviceenvisioned for use by a few privileged scholars and referencelibrarians has become ubiquitous, with tens of millions oftransactions annually[1]. To assess challenges and possiblesolutions, it is worth taking a look at the history and growth of

interlibrary loan services and the current shift in theinformation landscape, particularly the impact of librarycollections moving from physical to electronic. While we canlearn from the past, we also must recognise that libraries, andresource sharing librarians, need to embrace these challenges

in order to make ourselves a vital part of today’s informationeconomy.

A really brief history of interlibrary loan

In 2007 Teresa Miguel wrote a useful history of interlibraryloan, specifically from an international perspective. She makes

reference to possibly the first known instance of interlibraryloan, in eighth-century Germany between St Kilian’sMonastery and Fulda Monastery. There is alsodocumentation of book exchanges between Cordoba, Spain,and Baghdad when Spain was part of the Moorish kingdom,

ending in the thirteenth century with the Christian reconquestof Spain. One of the most interesting citings is the effort ofNicolas Claude Fabri de Peiresc to establish a loan program inthe seventeenth century between the Royal Library of Paris

and the Vatican and Barberini libraries in Rome. It is

interesting because it failed – not for a lack of effort by

librarians, but rather because of a political ban of the French

government on the transport of manuscripts (Miguel, 2007).

It would be more than 200 years after Peiresc before the first

real proposals for organised lending between libraries were to

be set forth.One of the first such proposals was Jewett’s (1851) “A plan

for stereotyping catalogues by separate titles, and for forming

a general stereotyped catalogue of the public libraries in the

United States”. As librarian of the Smithsonian Institution, he

advocated for a printed union catalogue for the USA with oneof the benefits being that “[. . .] every student in this country

would be able to learn the full extent of his resources for

investigation [. . .] [and] [. . .] A system of exchange and of

loans might, with certain stringent conditions, be established

[. . .]” (Jewett, 1851). This was followed in 1876 by a letter

from Samuel Green, the library director of the Worcester

(Massachusetts) Public Library to Library Journal in which he

advocated for lending between public libraries in the USA(Green, 1876).

However, it was the twentieth century that saw interlibrary

loan become a regular service of libraries with agreements for

regulation and responsibility, as well as the growth of

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at

www.emeraldinsight.com/0264-1615.htm

Interlending & Document Supply

40/1 (2012) 4–11

Emerald Group Publishing Limited [ISSN 0264-1615]

[DOI 10.1108/02641611211214224]

Received 19 December 2011Accepted 21 December 2011

q 2012 OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc.

Published with the kind permission of IFLA, www.ifla.org/

This paper was originally presented at the IFLA 12thInterlending & Document Supply Conference held inChicago, IL, 19-21 September 2011. The authors wishto acknowledge Tam Dalrymple, Senior InformationServices Specialist at the OCLC Library, for herresearch assistance.

4

document supply centres and loan networks. Table I shows

some of the major events worldwide in this movement.Many countries already had a history of ILL so these events

are meant to show the codification, creation of delivery supply

centres, formal networking, and propagation of ILL workflow

tools.Perusing Table I it is interesting to see how the movement

has progressed from the need to simply reach agreement on

what ILL is and how to do it, to the construction of ILLlending networks, and then on to a focus on workflow

efficiencies. Of course, it can be argued the networks were

about workflow efficiencies, but the real workflow change for

networks came when computer-driven processes replacedpaper and mail. This was the precursor to the internet age

that would impact so much of what libraries do.

The shift of library collections from physical toelectronic

The sharing of collections between libraries grew to become a

standard part of delivering information to their constituencies

in the twentieth century. Innovation by individuals,

cooperatives and companies made interlibrary loan more

attainable to even the smallest libraries[2], and workflow

efficiencies allowed for an enormous increase in the volume of

materials being loaned. All of this growth was based on the

physical collections of libraries. Then the 1990s saw the

revolution into the internet age which had a dramatic impact

across all library services.One upside for libraries was that introduction of the web

made it possible to discover resources much more easily.

Table I Twentieth century events and regulations impacting worldwide interlibrary loan

1916 Britain National Lending Library for Science and Technology begins as part of the British Library (British Library Board,

n.d.)

Supply centre

1919 USA American Library Association (ALA) adopts its first resource sharing code (OCLC, 2008, Appendix F) Codification

1929 IFLA First IFLA World Congress in Italy; among 15 resolutions, no. 10 was “That international loan between libraries

should be effected without intermediary and on a basis of reciprocity, whereby the conditions attached should be

standardised as much as possible.“ (de Vries, 1976, p. 24)

Codification

1935 IFLA Rules of International Library Loans adopted (de Vries, 1976, p. 67) Codification

1937 IFLA Sub-committee on International Loans establisheda Codification

1939 France CNRS founded to perform document delivery of scientific findings (INIST, n.d.) Supply centre

1952 USA ALA revises interlibrary loan code, adopting standardised interlibrary loan form (OCLC, 2008) Codification

1965 CANADA CISTI – the first automated edition of the Union List of Scientific Serials in Canadian Libraries (NRC, 2010) Supply centre

1975 IFLA IFLA International Lending Office created (Line, 1976) Codification

1979 USA OCLC ILL System introduced (Smith, 1998) Network

1983 The Netherlands Pica-systems becomes operational with an online Dutch union catalogue with interlibrary loan subsystem

(Bossers and van Muyen, 1984)

Network

1985 Britain BL Document Supply Centre, formerly the National Lending Library for Science and Technology (British Library

Board, n.d.)

Supply centre

1986 Canada AVISO ILL client developed at University of Waterloo, Canada (Wright, 1995) Workflow

1988 France CNRS merges to become INIST (INIST, n.d.) Supply centre

1990 Australia National Library of Australia launches networked ILL service for Australian libraries (NLA, n.d.) Network

1991 Global ISO ILL Protocol adopted (Jackson, 2001) Codification

1991 USA Innovative Interfaces develops INN-Reach system (Library Technology Guides, n.d.) Workflow

1993 South Africa SABINET launches networked ILL service for South Africab Network

1994 Germany SUBITO, a German document delivery service, is launched (Mueller, 2006) Network

1995 Global The IPIG forms to identify ways in which the Protocol can be more widely implemented (ARL, 1996) Codification

1996 Global OCLC accepts requests using ISO ILL protocol and establishes ISO ILL test bedc Network

1996 Canada Relais developed in Ottawa, Canada to support interlibrary loan and document delivery services (Relais

International, 2005)

Workflow

1996 Europe VDX trialled in the DALI Project for the EC on using the ISO ILL Protocol (ISO 10160/10161) (NLA, 1998) Network

1997 USA RapidILL service created by Colorado State University Libraries (CSU, n.d.) Network

1997 Australia CPS Systems, Inc., releases the Universal Resource Sharing Application (URSA) (Library Technology Guides, 1997) Workflow

1997 USA Pigasus develops Wings ILL client (Dorman, 1998) Workflow

1997 USA ILLiad released by Virginia Techd Workflow

2001 DENMARK: Interlibrary loan in Denmark begins with the introduction of Bibliotek.dk (Erlandsen, 2011) Network

2005 The Netherlands Netherlands Public Library Association adopts VDX resource sharing solution for networked ILL (FDI, 2005) Network

2009 Global The first implementation of the Request Transfer Message (RTM) introduced in OCLC’s WorldCat Navigator

service (Norman and Young, 2011)

Codification

2010 USA OCLC enables unmediated borrowing of electronic articles (OCLC, 2010) Workflow

Notes: aInformation obtained through e-mail exchange with IFLA staff, July 2011; binformation obtained through e-mail message from Rosalind Hattingh,Executive Director of SABINET, 17 July 2011; cinformation obtained through conversation with OCLC product management staff on 12 July 2011; dper e-mailmessage from Jason Glover, President, Atlas Systems, 19 July 2011

Resource sharing in a cloud computing age

Matt Goldner and Katie Birch


Volume 40 · Number 1 · 2012 · 4–11

5

However, it also spawned a shift in the publishing and

information worlds from physical materials to electronic

materials. Enter iTunes, iPods, YouTube, Flickr, and e-

journals. Exit CD’s, tapes, film, photo albums and searching

physical journals by title.The results of this shift can be seen by looking at materials

expenditures over the past few years. From 2002 to 2009,

academic libraries in Germany saw expenditures for e-

resources increase from 11 per cent of their total materials

budgets to 30 per cent[3]. In the same period e-resources

budgets for the Association of Research Libraries in the

United States and Canada increased from 25 per cent to 56

per cent (Kyrillidou and Morris, 2011). Research Libraries

UK, reporting slightly differently, saw the percentage of the

serials budget spent on e-journals rise from 9.7 per cent to

51.9 per cent (Research Information Network, 2010, pp. 17).

The Council of Australian University Librarians reports show

that from 2004 to 2010 e-resource expenditures as a

percentage of the entire library budget (not just materials)

went from 15.9 per cent to 28.3 per cent[4].While this shift to electronic journals could have been a

boon for interlibrary loan services, theoretically removing the

need to scan physical journal articles for lending, it actually

caused problems. Publishers had not (and to a degree still

have not completely) developed a business model for

electronic journals to replace that for physical ones[5]. This

was demonstrated by embargo periods imposed by publishers,

delaying access to the electronic version of an issue for three

to six months following the publication of the physical issue.

This very cautious and conservative publisher reaction spilled

over to interlibrary loan, with many publishers saying that

libraries were not allowed to supply articles from electronic

journals to their ILL partners.

New challenges . . . and some old ones revisited

As we assess the information landscape in which resource

sharing exists today, the impact of the transition from physical

to electronic collections must be at the forefront. In the

physical collection world, many of the issues surrounding

discovery and requesting have been addressed over the last

30-40 years. Union catalogues of library holdings exist in

many countries around the world and a global view is offered

by OCLC’s WorldCat catalogue. Capabilities such as

checking availability in real time have been enabled in some

systems so libraries can know they are sending requests to the

best possible supplier. Scanning of articles is common and

well supported by both technology and consortial agreements,

resulting in quick response time.The switch to electronic collections, though, has introduced

a new set of challenges for resource sharing. The ability to

discover what other libraries have access to electronically is

currently labour-intensive. In the same way that libraries

maintained and exposed their physical collections through the

OPAC, they now maintain and expose their electronic

collections through knowledge bases and A to Z lists. But

these efforts are distributed across libraries and there is no

true union catalogue of electronic holdings (although

organisations like Rapid and OCLC have begun this effort).

One might argue that some union catalogues have libraries’ e-

journals, but this is just at the title level and does not indicate

chronological coverage, embargo periods, or who the actual

supplier is. As a result, requesting electronically published

articles is prohibitive from a discovery viewpoint.However, knowing what libraries subscribe to electronically

is only half of the resource sharing problem. As stated

previously, publishers have reluctantly allowed sharing of

articles from e-journals; but even as they have begun allowing

it, they apply varying restrictions. Some require the supplying

library to print the article and either fax or mail it. Others

require the library to print the article and then re-scan it for

electronic transmission. There are restrictions that allow

lending only to non-profit organisations or within the same

country. The problem is that all of these terms are buried

inside the licenses, so knowing what a particular publisher

allows is another labour-intensive process that has heretofore

prevented widespread sharing of e-journal articles between

ILL partners.Then there is the issue of e-books. Although libraries are

increasingly purchasing or licensing e-books, so far publishers

have not allowed lending of these materials. This means an

increasingly large portion of monograph collections will

become inaccessible for resource sharing. And where do the

mass digitisation projects fit into this environment? While

specific libraries have begun working out access within their

institutions to the published works they have digitised, this

large body of readily accessible materials remains isolated

away from resource sharing workflows.While this shift to e-resources has been taking place, the

borrowing of physical materials has not declined, and indeed,

in some spaces is still increasing due to improved discovery of

other libraries’ collections. But in spite of the rapid change in

technology over the last 15 years, a hybrid of paper or e-mail-

and technology-based systems is still in use in libraries today.

Libraries use many different tools to facilitate their workflows

and partnerships. At this point in time we have yet to reach

the panacea of a single system that can handle all manner of

requests coming from all types of systems and libraries. The

request transfer message (RTM) has theoretically made the

moving of requests from one request management system to

another simpler, but there has not been widespread uptake of

this OpenURL profile. The result is that multiple request

management workflows and silos continue to exist.Finally, payment remains an issue for many resource

sharing librarians, hence the ad hoc reciprocity agreements

that spring up when borrowing from outside primary systems

and partnerships. IFLA vouchers remain in use but an

electronic alternative would be welcomed. Payment systems

exist within systems such as the Libraries Australia Document

Delivery service, WorldCat Resource Sharing and UnityUK,

but they are principally closed systems.The resource sharing community needs our thought leaders

to consider the new problems introduced by the growth of e-

resource collections, and continue to work on solutions for

the older problems around resource sharing of physical

materials and resource sharing workflows in general.

Transformation through collaboration

Interlibrary loan librarians have always been an active

community seeking ways to work better together. At a

conference a few years ago, Cyril Oberlander made the

comment (and I paraphrase from memory), “As the need for

libraries to cooperate more closely continues to grow, who




Volume 40 · Number 1 · 2012 · 4–11

6

better to learn about collaboration from than people who rely

on sharing resources across the globe.”In this section, we will use the strategic management

framework PEST analysis, which stands for political,

economic, social, and technological analysis as it gives an

overview of the macro environmental factors that should betaken into consideration when reviewing a specific business

area.

Political analysis

It is striking that in countries where a national body, such as anational library, supports resource sharing, it flourishes.

Where a national library is engaged with the resource sharing

community, and either runs a union catalogue and resourcesharing system or outsources to an agency, the culture of

resource sharing is inherent, part of the national picture of

libraries, funded and therefore supported. This is the case inmany countries across the world, including Scandinavian

countries and many other European countries, as well as

Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa.

International resource sharing

International borrowing and lending has been the source of

many resource sharing issues over the years. Someinternational groups exist either between two countries or

many countries with a common goal.Examples include the Trans-Tasman Interlending

agreement[6] between Australia and New Zealand, the

Global ILL Framework project[7] and the SHARES

project[8] facilitated by the Research Libraries Partnership.Much of the success of these projects is due to the agreement

on policies between partner libraries. However, this can be

challenging to negotiate and much international activity takesplace outside of any formal agreements, with individual

library staff negotiating on an ad hoc basis with possible

lenders.

Copyright and licensing

Resource sharing librarians need to make sure that they areusing available resources within their libraries to understand

the implications of their national copyright law on their

resource sharing operations. With the shift from print to

electronic, resource sharing staff needs to understand boththeir license agreements and copyright legislation, and make

sure their operation is working within those boundaries. But

librarians must also be proactive in seeking less restrictivelicensing terms and should work with and through IFLA and

their national library organisations to influence legislation in

their specific countries.

Economic analysis

Free versus fee?

As far back as the 1800s, lending libraries have recovered

some of their costs by charging the borrowing library for

shipping costs; however, there has always been a strong sense

of reciprocity within the ILL community and there are stillgroups where this model exists. One example is LVIS[9], with

almost 3,000 members predominantly in the USA but with

some membership overseas.When libraries do charge, the request prices vary greatly. A

snapshot from the OCLC Policies Directory indicates lender

fees starting from as low as USD$0.15. Anecdotal evidence

suggests that with ad hoc requesting between libraries,

reciprocity seems to reign with libraries agreeing to lend basedon the premise that the borrowing library will return the

favour as and when required.Borrowing libraries select lenders based on a number of

factors, including reciprocal arrangements, lending library

turnaround time and locality. So while price is a factor, it maynot be the principal factor when selecting a potential supplier.

In the UK, the large CONARLS group of libraries has afixed request price among the membership. CONARLS[10]

began in 2000 and has more than 400 UK member libraries,with a fixed fee of £5.10 for a loan.

Both models co-exist and are usually related to regional,

national or international membership of both formal andinformal groups of libraries with agreed-on policies on price

and other factors in the ILL workflow.One consequence of the technology shift is that resource

sharing has been opened up to a free market economy thatconsists not only of library suppliers, but also alternative

suppliers that have joined the marketplace.

Buy or borrow?

The decision to buy or borrow is now part of the resourcesharing workflow in many libraries across the world, yet the

question of payment remains an issue. Access to a credit card

within the library is usually the enabler to make use of othersources, and while this is increasingly becoming the norm,

many resource sharing staff members do not have access to acredit card, and therefore often do not have access to this

mixed economy.For resource sharing staff members who do have access to a

credit card, it opens up an entirely new workflow, usually

outside of their ILL practices. If a library can buy an itemfrom the Amazon marketplace for example, or from a second-

hand bookseller via the web or through its resource sharingtool, then this is taken into consideration. A popular

misconception perhaps is that “everything” is available from

Amazon. OCLC has found that the top monograph titlesrequested through its WorldCat Resource Sharing system in

FY11 was a mix of best-sellers (Kathryn Stockett’s The Helpand George Washington’s Sacred Fire by Peter A. Lillback being

the two most-requested titles) and obscure, or “Long tail,”

titles that, while available through Amazon, were beingoffered at exorbitant prices in the UK and/or USA[11] (see

Table II).The (r)evolution of cloud computing now makes it feasible

to embed this mixed economy into resource sharing workflow,

as web services and APIs provided by Amazon and otherbooksellers enable the applications themselves to be

embedded within the workflow.

International boundaries

As technology has opened up boundaries in terms of data andthe resource sharing world has become smaller, librarians

have become increasingly adept at locating materials heldaround the world. National union catalogues have become

available via the web and resource sharing professionals havebuilt informal networks – but this workflow is often managed

through e-mail rather than within resource sharing tools.

While it is an interesting part of a resource sharing librarian’sdaily activity, it can be time-consuming. Once a holding

library has been identified, the ILL contact person in the




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lending library must be located, and then an element of

negotiation needs to be undertaken, which may take days if

time zones are a factor.

Social analysisTechnology is speedily growing with no sign of stopping (Yan, 2006).

As we have already stated, the discovery landscape has

changed dramatically over the last 15 years, and is reflected in

both user behaviour and the shift from print to electronic

resources in libraries.

Meeting the needs of a different generation

Generation Yers are “heavily immersed in the digital world”

(Yan, 2006), yet they lack discrimination in choosing

information sources and selecting information from those

sources (Adams, 2009). Libraries must come to terms with

this generation’s behaviour and address the need for instant

gratification, which is now inherent in many of us. From a

resource sharing perspective, the need to speed up the

turnaround and offer alternative delivery mechanisms is key.

Collecting a hard copy from the circulation desk in the library

is not an effective solution in today’s environment. Library

users expect their requested materials in a timely way and at

their convenience; libraries should therefore address this need

within their own workflows and seek lending partners that can

provide this optimal service to their users.

An aging professional population?

Baby Boomers are leaving the library profession and taking

their knowledge with them. Succession planning within

libraries is key to libraries’ future success where a good deal

of workflow-related information is not accessible and best

practices are seldom documented. Knowledge management

strategies should be put in place to ensure successful

knowledge transfer within libraries, and focus should be

given to niche areas such as resource sharing. An excellent

example of this is the Information Delivery Services (IDS)

project in New York State in the USA, which is working “to

provide a unified community of trust and support built

around a critical and clearly understood purpose: effective

resource sharing”[12]. This project actively promotes bestpractices and offers a mentor program that assigns newmembers with applications and systems specialists in order toembed their philosophy.

Technological analysis

Earlier in this paper, we considered the shift from print toelectronic resources and its impact on resource sharingworkflows. Here, we will briefly consider the issue ofconnecting resource sharing systems.

In the late 1990s, many viewed the implementation of theISO ILL protocol as the panacea for ILL interoperability.Where software was developed from the ground up based onthe protocol and with support of national bodies, theimplementations have been successful, notably in Australiaand New Zealand. Where the protocol was layered on top ofan already existing system with its own internal protocol, suchas the British Library’s ART ISO gateway, it was lesssuccessful. In 2010, the British Library announced the demiseof its ART ISO gateway (British Library Board, 2010).

The “Rethinking Resource Sharing Initiative”[13] recentlyannounced a review of the ISO ILL (ISO 10160/10161)protocol and its future in the community. This is a welcomedevelopment that mayenable the development of an alternative,cloud-based lightweight messaging protocol between resourcesharing systems. Cloud-based systems are not new in resourcesharing as many countries have a national cloud-based resourcesharing tool, accessed via a web browser. However, these closedsystems are not accessible to other national systems orinternational systems. The work by the Rethinking ResourceSharing Initiative should inform these discussions, and possiblylead to an alternative web service that many of the world’s closedsystems could perhaps accommodate.

Conclusion

Resource sharing continues to grow as a critical informationservice in libraries around the world. We need to worktogether to solve the new challenges that have arisen for ourcommunity, as well as continue to find solutions for olderproblems.

Table II Top ten monographs requested through WorldCat resource sharing in 2011

Amazon price

Title

WorldCat

holdings

Number of

requests

UK

(£)

USA

($)

The Help by Kathryn Stockett 3,128 2,745 25.99 16.14

George Washington’s Sacred Fire by Peter A. Lillback and Jerry Newcombe 476 2,452 21.38 18.08

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson and Reg Keeland 2,380 2,424 20.68 15.33

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson and Reg Keeland 2,590 2,226 19.80 18.45

Margin of Safety: Risk-averse Value Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor bySeth A. Klarman 152 1,548 919.99a 1,379.95

Red Book 5 Liber Novus by C.G. Jung and Sonu Shamdasani 685 1,515 86.40 120.90

Kevin Trudeau’s Free Money “They” Don’t Want You to Know About by Kevin Trudeau 528 1,469 3.32a 15.05

Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything across Italy, India and Indonesia byElizabeth Gilbert 2,029 1,242 18.44 14.96

Real George Washington by Jay A. Parry and Andrew M. Allison 191 1,235 11.57 14.97

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins 2,900 983 14.61 8.99

Note: aUsed only




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First and foremost, we should work to find a solution for

the problem of distributed knowledge bases. Diverse and

incompatible systems and formats often make it difficult to

ascertain which libraries have needed resources on hand, or if

they even possess the appropriate license. Until we have a

reliable method for determining “who has what,” solving

many of the other issues at hand will do little to get the right

materials to our users in a timely fashion.Secondly, we need to work together, as a profession and

with all players in the industry, to garner for libraries the same

(or similarly useful) rights to e-journals and e-books that we

have had for physical materials for decades. While restrictive

licensing terms for the sharing of electronic articles may

preserve, among publishers, some sense that they are

“protecting” revenue it is only a placebo effect. We need to

work with journal and e-book publishers to find ways to

creatively leverage the massive brand value, audiences, and

resources that libraries represent in order to invent win-win-

win situations for users, publishers and libraries.Librarians also need to use their voices within the political

systems of their countries in order to promote copyright

legislation that serves the interest of information seekers and

civic populations as well as publishers. In most countries,

copyright and patent systems were set up to serve the dual

goals of providing creators and owners with a measure of

protection for their intellectual property, while also giving

value back to the society that nurtures their work, provides a

stable marketplace, and supports the population that will

consume their ideas. In many countries, changes in the

business models of publishers and distributors have led to

copyright changes that are more restrictive and even

excessively punitive. As advocates of lifelong learning and

the value of social knowledge creation, librarians need to

actively represent a balanced viewpoint on these issues and, in

some cases, be informed advocates on behalf of their

constituencies. One particularly important – and potentially

transformative – issue in this regard is the question of how to

include mass digitisation items in resource sharing workflows.

Finding a legal and equitable solution to this problem could

provide millions of people with access to an astounding array

of materials in our libraries.Finally we should continue to work with resource sharing

system suppliers to insure workflows continue to improve and

accommodate both the shift from physical to electronic

materials and the growth in buying resources in place of

borrowing when appropriate. When possible, open systems

that support data sharing and reuse should be encouraged, as

they represent a form of “meta resource sharing” in

themselves.There is no doubt that resource sharing has been an

incredible source of value to our users, and an increasingly

important one in recent decades. We are at a crossroads, now,

in the library community. We have, for the first time in

history, real competition for the roles of information steward,

custodian and guide. The internet provides us, now, with

most of this competition . . . but also with our greatest tool for

increasing the value we provide. We must work together to

find ways to leverage all our shared resources – whether they

be materials, data, workflows, software or our own expertise –

in order to keep pace with the rest of the information industry

and to keep faith with the communities that rely on us for

what is still a truly unique service.

Notes

1 It is an interesting challenge to get a true global count of

transactions. According to the OCLC Annual Report

2009/2010, member libraries transacted 10.2 million ILL

requests on the OCLC system alone. An additional 1.7

million ILL requests were processed through

DOCLINE, the National Library of Medicine’s

automated ILL request routing and referral system. But

when we consider the broad landscape of resource

sharing today, which has moved beyond traditional

interlibrary loan to include consortial borrowing systems

and document delivery services, it is easy to demonstrate

that the numbers are in the tens of millions.2 When Matt Goldner was director of Tifton-Tift County

Public Library in the early 1990s, the library served a

countywide population of 36,000, but was able to offer

ILL, filling an average of 500 requests per year, due to

access to the OCLC lending network.3 Data gathered from the web site for the

Hochschulbibliothekszentrum des Landes Nordrhein-

Westfalen (hbz), available at: www.hbz-nrw.de/angebote/

dbs/auswertung/gesamtauswertungen4 Based on data exported from the Council of Australian

University Librarians (CAUL) web site, available at:

www.caul.edu.au/caul-programs/caul-statistics (accessed

13 July 2011).5 For a good view of the current situation see: Bosch et al.

(2011).6 See Trans Tasman Interlending web site at: www.natlib.

govt.nz/about-this-site/glossary/trans-tasman-interl

ending7 See North American Coordinating Council on Japanese

Library Resources, The Global ILL Framework (GIF)

Project, at: www.nccjapan.org/illdd/gifproject.html8 See SHARES Program web site at: www.oclc.org/resear

ch/activities/shares/9 Libraries Very Interested in Sharing (LVIS) is a group

within OCLC’s WorldCat Resource Sharing Community

whose members are committed to not charging for

interlibrary loan.10 See CONARLS web site at: combinedregions.com/

Conarls11 See OCLC web site for a list of top ten and top 1000

titles requested through ILL at: www.oclc.org/resour

cesharing/statistics/toprequests.htm12 See IDS Project web site at: idsproject.org/13 See Rethinking Resource Sharing web site at:

rethinkingresourcesharing.org/

References

Adams, L.E. (2009), “Information seeking behaviour of

Generation Y students at the Stellenbosch University

Library and Information Service”, MBibl thesis, University

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Further reading

Colorado State University (CSU) (2006), “RapidILL service

to support libraries throughout Massachusetts, New

Hampshire, and Connecticut”, Faculty & Staff Resources,

20 June, available at: comment.colostate.edu/index.asp?

page¼display_article&article_id¼924828080

Institut de l’Information Scientifique et Technique (INIST)

(2010), “About INIST”, available at: www.inist.fr/spip.

php?rubrique25 or www.inist.fr/spip.php?article13

(accessed 13 July 2011).

About the authors

Matt Goldner is Product and Technology Advocate at OCLC,Inc. He has experience in both academic and public libraries,

as well as product direction and creation at Geac Computers

and Fretwell-Downing Informatics before joining OCLC in

2004. He is a frequent speaker on issues where technology

meets process and broader topics such as the future of

resource sharing, changing collections, and the impact of web

scale management on libraries. Matt Goldner is the

corresponding author and can be contacted at: goldnerm@

oclc.orgKatie Birch is Portfolio Director for Delivery Services at

OCLC, Inc., where she oversees WorldCat Resource Sharing,

including the WorldCat policies directory, IFM, ILLiad,

VDX, and WorldCat Navigator. She has ten years’ experience

in resource sharing and document delivery and was project

manager and business development manager at Talis before

joining OCLC in 2005.

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Volume 40 · Number 1 · 2012 · 4–11

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resource sharing in a cloud computing age

Documents