RESOURCE SHARING: MAKING POSSIBLE THE TRANSITION FROM PAPER TO ELECTRONIC INFORMATION

Abstract

This paper will discuss how research libraries in the United States have increased resource sharing in order to move as rapidly as possible to expanded use of electronic information. The costs of moving to electronic information can be staggering in terms of purchasing access, obtaining equipment, and training staff and users. More libraries in the world are joining forces to make the change to the electronic library. The "Virtual Library" is now possible, but the economic, political and social questions are still stalling its full implementation. Nevertheless, great progress has been made in this transition period, thanks to resource sharing. Frederick C. Lynden Associate University Librarian for Technical Services Box A, Rockefeller Library Brown University Providence, R.I. 02912 U.S.A.

Introduction:

There are many outside forces, i.e., forces which cannot be controlled by libraries, which are influencing the future of libraries. These forces include:

continued high rates of publishing. "U.S.Scientists had 217,000 articles published in 1965 and about 660,000 in 1995." (Tenopir 1996)
"More books and journals, electronic, and multi-media resources are published each year-approximately 850,000 items worldwide according to UNESCO." (Loring 1995).
rapidly rising costs for published materials.The Association of Research Libraries (ARL), an association of the 100 largest research libraries in the United States, reports that its member libraries have seen "since 1986, on the average, the annual increase in unit prices [rise] 11.4% for serials compared to 5.9% for monographs." (Kryillidou 1996).
volatile currency exchange rates. An Italian librarian reports: " the situation worsened for those countries whose currency devaluated during the eighties. For Italian libraries the subscription index price valuated in Italian liras, passed during the period from 1989-1993 from 440.9 (1980=1100) to 905.3 for U.S.journals, from 320.8 to 627.20 for British journals and from 250.7 to 365.4 for French serials." (Pizzi 1995).
proliferation of different formats, including electronic. "Statistics gathered by Martha E. Williams of the University of Illinois tell us that over 8,000 databases now exist in the information marketplace, representing some 5.6 billion records. From 1985 through 1993, she notes, bibliographic databases grew by a factor of 58 per-cent while full-text sources grew by 490 percent." (Rockman 1995).
copyright regulations. "The ability to change things on a computer screen removes the authority of the original creator, essentially allowing a new creation of a synthesis between the work as originally conceived, and user-invoked changes...Altered images in particular raise interesing questions... primary among these are authorship and authenticity...these are questions which will occupy the global community for some years to come." (Berry 1996)
reduced expenditures by governing bodies. An Italian librarian reports that "financial resources for Government institutions like universities and, of course, their libraries, decreased drastically in real terms." (Pizzi 1995, 213) .
increased public demand for resources. "A tutorial program, Roadmap, available on the Internet, which aims to teach people how to 'navigate' their way around the Internet had 40,000 from 69 countries lined up to use it during October 1994." (Tedd 1995). Clearly, one of the most significant issues for libraries worldwide is the proliferation of electronic sources of information.
the Internet, including the hypertext, World Wide Web (WWW), now offers an impressive array of sources from throughout the world, and the number of sites continues to grow. "Some sources cite Internet penetration into 100 countries, with 50,000 separate networks containing 5 million host computers and more than 30 million users." (Gilster 1995).
commercial databases are widely used. University Microfilms International, a major microform producer in the United States, now offers full text services and publishers such as Academic and Elsevier are making their titles available through table of contents and full text services.
bibliographic utilities, such as OCLC and RLG, no longer just offer catalog data but now also offer full text services such as First Search and Citadel.
electronic journals are now increasing in number. Applied Physics Online, for example, is a paper title which is now being offered electronically, and the Online Journal of Current Clinical Trials is an example of a new title created by OCLC.There are many reasons why it is imperative for libraries to move to the use of electronic resources.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Electronic Resources:

Electronic sources of information have many advantages for librarians. Many of the Internet sites contain "reference information, catalogues and indexes, encyclopedias, pictures, dictionaries, names and addresses, jokes, information for hobbies such as cooking, juggling, fishing, or gardening." (Tedd 1995, 44). Since this information is on a computer it has the following flexibility:

Available worldwide at computer sites, Internet data can be transmitted and received anywhere in the world without postage and delivery constraints.
Full text information and multi-media information are available online. Thanks to hypertext, WWW sites can offer color graphics, sound, and film.This flexibility again is available at one's personal computer.
Instantaneous shipment and receipt. Electronic mail can be sent from the United States to Europe (or other continents) instantaneously. This capability is very important for scientific communication.
Numerous access points available which are not frequently available in paper. For example, electronic databases frequently have keyword indexes which provide access by title or subject words.
Transferability to personal databases is a capability which allows users to avoid copying data.
Consolidation of many years of physical volumes and the ability to reduce costs of binding, storage and retrieval. Nevertheless, it is now widely conceded that there can be major costs and impediments to adopting electronic technology.
supplemental costs of technology are seen by observers as raising the overall costs of the library. Libraries must now own and operate expensive special equipment such as high-end computers, scanners such as Ariel, and high speed printers. Furthermore, this equipment must be maintained and upgraded.
staff costs to run, program, and maintain machinery, and to educate the users are part of using electronic technology and rise rapidly. It is clear that more skilled staff are required now to assist patrons in using electronic materials. Electronic reference tools have their own unique codes for searching fields, different operators for searching, different log-ins and exits, and different function keys. However, libraries have minimized the differences through the use of programming. Of course, this kind of expertise does not come inexpensively nor does the assistance necessarily come very rapidly. In addition to the staff expertise required to assist users, staff expertise and equipment are required for the processing of these materials.
not always lower costs result from technology in the library. For example, it is true that, if the Library offers free printing, some computer searches, especially among untrained users, bring large results and the number of pages printed can be daunting.
costs and impediments also arise when using document delivery for access. Article databases have a copyright fee for all articles, and since the copyright fee is a sliding fee based upon the publisher's decision it can reduce the cost advantage of document delivery. For example, in the U.S., the Journal of Academic Librarianship has a copyright fee of $50 per article used, but a subscription costs only $158 per annum. (Swindler 1996). Therefore, if a library requests more than three articles from this title, it is more cost effective to purchase the journal. In some cases, the copyright holder does not permit a document supplier to deliver. It may also be necessary to query several document delivery agencies since the library's principal supplier may not offer the title which the Library is seeking.
inability to purchase other materials due to the high costs of electronic materials is probably the most serious problem with these materials. As one observer of the library situation, Dennis Dickinson, Beloit College, Wisconsin, notes: if libraries continue to draw down materials budgets to fund technology, they risk putting in place highly efficient and expensive mechanisms for sharing resources, while at the same time diminishing the very resources they hope to share. The inevitable result of this cost shifting ...will be the expeditious pooling of poverty (Dickinson 1995).

These are warnings which librarians should heed, and one means of heeding them is to put into place effective resource sharing.

Resource Sharing:

Any definition of resource sharing should probably begin with the ALA (American Library Association) Glossary of 1983 which described resource sharing as: A term covering a variety of organizations and activities engaged in jointly by a group of libraries for the purposes of improving services and/or cutting costs. Resource sharing may be established by informal or formal agreement or by contract and may operate locally, nationally, or internationally. The resources shared may be collections, bibliographic data, personnel, planning activities, etc. Formal organizations for resource sharing may be called bibliographic utilities, cooperative systems, consortia, networks, bibliographic service centers, etc. (Heartstill 1983).

Of course, in the electronic era, there are many other activities which can be subsumed under the expression "resource sharing." For example, sharing of electronic resources, consortial site licenses, and shared computer storage will be more commonplace. Resource sharing has many facets in the collection arena. Following is a list of the types of resource sharing which can impact collection building.

Coordinated collection development, dividing collection responsibilities among libraries, is an extremely effective type of resource sharing. It has been done in the United States in North Carolina since the 1930's. Three libraries, the so-called Research Triangle libraries, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Duke, and North Carolina State participate in this endeavor. The libraries have cooperated in area studies, dividing collecting geographically for Latin American countries, Slavic and East European, African, and Asian. The cooperative has included the University of Virginia which has participated in the Slavic and East European area collecting, and Tulane University which has participated in Latin American area acquisitions. Collecting has also been divided along lines of unique academic strengths, e.g., Duke in Forestry and Oriental history and UNC in geology and library science. Another area is the collection of depository documents, dividing by various international agencies. The institutions have also coordinated the purchases of microform sets (Dominguez & Swindler 1993).

It seems logical in an international environment to consider adopting some plan of national coordination. At least three countries have mounted such an effort. England has a model plan with its British Library Document Supply Centre where serials are collected and can be shared by the entire country (Tedd 1995). In Australia, there are efforts underway to develop a "Distributed National Collection (DNC)" based upon conspectuses produced in Australian libraries (Waters 1992). In Germany, there are a series of special libraries, e.g., one for engineering, another for agriculture, another for economic sciences, and another for medicine (Kaegbein 1987). In the United States, the regional medical library system, run by the National Library of Medicine, provides a good example of collection coordination which is automated. Collaborative collection development which pools funds among libraries has occurred in the United States at the University of California (U.C.) system and at Stanford. This type of collection development depends upon a pool of money shared by ten U.C. institutions and Stanford which is then used to purchase materials. A recent account of the Science Translation Journal Pilot Project explains that this project provides shared access to translation journals in the physical sciences and saves the libraries more than $100,000 a year. This project is one of many in which these ten institutions have engaged. The Shared Acquisitions effort is called Shared Collections and Access Program or SCAP. There is a central pot of money amounting to about 3% of the total acquisition budgets of the UC libraries. From this fund, the libraries have acquired millions of dollars worth of materials while avoiding duplication of these materials (Hightower & Soete 1995).

Consortial cost sharing rather than pooling money uses cooperation to obtain discounts for materials. Cost sharing is allowing libraries in the U.S. to finance electronic acquisitions. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that "more institutions are turning to library consortia as a way to combine their purchasing power and win better deals on everything from the electronic version of Encyclopedia Britannica to data bases of poetry and scientific abstracts." (DeLoughry1996)

According to Joseph J. Esposito, President of Britannica, the selling of Britannica products to consortia is a "win-win situation for the consortium and the vendor"(DeLoughry 1996).

Cooperative or shared storage is an important consideration in collection management since collection funds can be consumed by storage costs. A cooperative storage facility can assist libraries through a last copy policy. In other words, all but one copy of a duplicated title can be held at the storage facility saving costs for all parties. The most famous example of a facility designed for this purpose is the British Library Document Supply Centre (BLDSC). It has been a significant source for libraries throughout the world.

It is the largest such facility in the world, receiving about 3.7 million requests a year (Tedd 1995). In the United States, both the Research Libraries Group and OCLC use the BLDSC for delivery of materials for their customers.

The Center for Research Libraries is clearly the best example of this type of storage in the United States.

In existence since 1951, when it was the Midwest Interlibrary Center, the Center for Research Libraries has developed a number of innovative cooperative programs, including the microfilming of foreign newspapers. The Center administers five cooperative area studies microform projects: the Cooperative Africana Microform Project (CAMP), the Latin American Microform Project (LAMP), the Middle East Microform Project (MEMP), the South Asia Microform Project (SAMP), and the Southeast Asia Microform Project (SEAM). The Center is now embarking on a capital campaign to modernize and expand its facilities. They have received a $575,000 Challenge Grant from National Endowment for the Humanities, a U.S. government fund supporting humanities projects (NEH 1996).

Common interlibrary loan, using document delivery, is also an extremely important means of resource sharing and it can be greatly facilitated through electronic means. Recently, a library in England has chosen a more economical means of obtaining materials through a partnership with a library in the Netherlands. The Cranfield University Library has begun sending electronic mail requests to the Delft University of Technology. Using this partnership, by limiting articles to less than 10 pages, transmitting the request by electronic mail, and having a single staff member responsible, the Cranfield University Library has actually cut costs from 4.11 to 3.91 pounds per article when compared with using the BLDSC.

Consortial sharing of electronic resources is another important type of resource sharing to enhance collections. In the United Kingdom, there has been widespread sharing of electronic resources through a program called the Electronic Libraries Programme, which has 15 million pounds allocated to it by the UK government. By 1996, there are 60 projects underway to develop electronic resources. They included the following types of projects: network resources, digitisation, electronic document delivery, electronic journals, electronic short loan (reserves), and images. Only one example is the Sharing of Educational Resources in an Electronic Network (SEREN) taking place in Wales. It is a geographically based document delivery service by a consortium of libraries in an all-Wales context (A Brief background 1996).

Another example of shared electronic resources comes from the United States at OhioLINK, a consortium of most libraries in the state of Ohio. Arnold Hirshon, former Director of Wright State, a member of Ohio Link, reports that by the end of 1994, "OhioLINK databases eliminated the local need for 15 out of 23 disks." (Hirshon 1995).

These databases are centrally funded, and are obtained at a lower cost through centralized buying. Further, these databases are maintained on high level machines with excellent response time and almost unlimited access.

Individual institutions do not have to pay for the databases or for access to them. Cooperative holdings agreements are another form of resource sharing which relies on conspectuses from a consortium. The Boston Library Consortium (BLC) which includes sixteen academic, research, and special libraries among them five ARL institutions: Boston Public Library, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Boston University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Brown (which joined in 1996), has made several cooperative holdings agreements. For example, the Cooperative Holding of Chemistry Journal Titles Agreement assigns titles to certain institutions who then agree to serve as "primary provider" to other libraries. The Consortium will regularly review agreements and they will fully honor copyright obligations. Further, BLC has just begun its own delivery system using a commercial service which has a van (Boston Library 1995).

Cooperative education and expertise are part of resource sharing agreements. In the United States, VIVA, the Virtual Library of Virginia, a program set up in1994, has established regional electronic resource centers which will provide full text information in electronic format. "The six regional centers will divide responsibilities among themselves to maximize the development and use of local expertise." (Hurt 1995).

A major education program for users of electronic materials is EDUCATE (End-User Courses in Information Access through Communication Technology). The EDUCATE programme was funded by CEC (Commission of the European Communities) Library Programme in February 1993. The project, to run three years, from February 1994 has produced basic self-paced user education courses which are available on the Internet and on the World Wide Web. It is both a stimulus and a help to libraries wanting to start courses on information handling and as a support tool for people taking part in individual learning. Basic texts have been written. There is also a newsletter on the WWW (Fjällbrant 1996).

Common or linked on-line systems are an essential part of collection resource sharing. The Danish launched a new database, the DANBIB-base, in 1994 which contains information on accessions and stocks of the research and special libraries of Denmark. In other words, it is a union catalog of Danish research and special libraries. It also has a 'letter box' system which permits libraries to order a title from the library holding it. Even libraries without an on-line catalog can enter their accessions into the system (Jensen 1995).

Cooperative delivery systems are an essential part of the resource sharing movement. Delivery of the document to the user is the raison d'etre of resource sharing. In the electronic age, delivery can also mean receiving full text on-line. An example of this type of cooperative plan is the recent agreement between RLG, PICA (the Dutch Centre for Library Automation), and Kluwer. According to a recent press release:

The new service will allow endusers to search WebCAT, a special catalog of bibliographic records (maintained in parallel on both the RLG and Pica host computers, via Web browsers and to retrieve documents linked to them- fulltext, articles, maps, images etc. -using Web technology. WebDOC interposes a licensing and accounting server between the catalog record and access to the whole document it describes, to verify that the user is covered by an institutional license or else to debit the user's personal account (Research Libraries 1995).
WebCAT is a cooperative variation of the commercial document delivery system which has become a very significant part of the "access versus acquisition "paradigm.
Elements Needed for Successful Resource Sharing: Many of the above examples provide clues to what successful resource sharing is. Successful resource sharing should have the following characteristics:
Satisfies user requirements. The Cranfield/Delft cooperation is an example where requests are sent by e-mail to speed delivery to the user.
Materials are centrally listed. An excellent example of an effective listing is the DANBIB-Base on-line catalog where libraries are reporting resources so that the user can obtain materials rapidly.
Materials are available when the user is looking for them in a successful resource sharing environment. The storage libraries provide this possibility. Examples given earlier are the BLDSC and CRL.
Savings are realized. An example of this type of benefit is the discounts offered by group purchase in the case of Encyclopedia Britannica.
Costs are reduced. With all libraries contributing to a joint purchase each library pays less. An excellent example of this is the Stanford/UC resource sharing cooperation.
Resources are increased locally in a successful resource sharing plan. In the Boston Library Consortium there are 16 institutions with a combined collection of over 23 million volumes.
Resources are shared nationally in a successful resource sharing plan. National plans from the United Kingdom, Germany, and Australia are examples.
Funding can be obtained for partners in a effective resource sharing plan. An example is the Electronic Libraries Program.
Retention agreements are made in an effective resource sharing plan. The cooperative holdings agreements at the BLC are examples of decisions made by consortium members to ensure that there are always holdings of a title.
Resource Sharing Plans endure because they are supported by top administrative officials who look beyond immediate needs through developing a common understanding of the purposes of the project.

Conclusion:

Resource sharing is often the antidote to the incremental costs of adding electronic sources to a library. Given funding realities in the United States, it is widely recognized that it will only be possible to increase a library's electronic resources through partnerships and cooperation. Recently an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education on site licenses described a cooperative (the Northeast Research Library Consortium) effort in New England to obtain favorable terms for access to a publisher's electronic journals (Jacobson 1996). There is also much to be learned from the approach of the British in their Electronic Libraries Program. The Danish have made borrowing materials easier by creating a national central on-line catalog. And a program for borrowing which crosses country lines is that of Cranfield University in England and Delft University in the Netherlands. These are all examples of how libraries can be innovative and creative in resource sharing and reduce their costs better enabling them to purchase electronic materials. In the American Colonies, a song had this message: "By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall." (Dickinson 1968).

Endnotes

Berry, J. W. (1966). Digital libraries : New initiatives with worldwide implications. IFLA Journal 22 (11)

Bevan, S. J. ; Harrington, J. (1995). Exploring the potential of new partnerships for document delivery at Cranfield University Library ; report of a trial with Delft University of Technology. Program : news of computers in libraries 29 (April) : 177- 181.

Boston Library (1995). Boston Library Consortium Collections Plan. May 1995.

A brief background to eLib. http://ukoln.bath.ac.uk/elib/background.html.

DeLoughry, T. (1996). Purchasing power : Cost sharing efforts help college libraries finance electronic acquisitions. The Chronicle of Higher Education XLII : A21 (February 9, 1996).

Dickinson, D. (1995). Academic libraries on the Cusp. Library Issues 15 (1)

Dickinson, J.(1968). By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall / from familiar quotations by John Bartlett. 14th ed., 460b. Boston : Little Brown & Company

Dominguez, P.B.; Swindler, L. (1993). Cooperative collection development in the research library Triangle University Libraries : a model for the nation. College and Research Libraries 54 (November) : 487-489.

Fjällbrant, N.(1996). EDUCATE - A Networked User Education Project in Europe. IFLA Journal 22 : 32-33.

Gilster, P.(1995). The New Internet Navigator, p. 19. N.Y. : John Wiley & Sons.

Heartstill, Y.(1983). Resource sharing. In: The ALA Glossary of Library and Information Science, p. 194. Chicago: ALA.

Hightower, C.; Soete, G. (1995). The consortium as learning organization : Twelve steps to success in collaborative collections projects. The Journal of Academic Librarianship 21 (March ) : 87.

Hirshon, A. (1995). Library strategic alliances and the digital library in the 1990's : the Ohio Link Experience. Journal of Academic Librarianship 21 (September ) : 383.

Hurt, C. (1995). Building the Foundations of Virginia's Virtual Library. Information Technology and Libraries (14 March) : 51.