Project ReShare is pleased to add LOUIS and MOBIUS to its growing number of members.
LOUIS is a consortium of public and private college and university libraries in the state of Louisiana, currently consisting of 47 members. LOUIS provides cost-effective collaboration for the procurement and support of library technology and resources. Twenty-two member institutions participate in LOUIS’ interlibrary loan platform. LOUIS supports technology that enables the reciprocal borrowing and lending between its member institutions and beyond, including multiple instances of SirsiDynix Symphony ILS and Atlas-supported ILLiad.
ReShare’s attention to contemporary open source technology focused on user needs appealed to LOUIS. “We believe Project ReShare will achieve many of our goals for improvement of our systems,” explained Teri Oaks Gallaway, Executive Director and Associate Commissioner for LOUIS. “We also believe that open-source software can encourage collaboration, not only between the consortium and vendors, but between our member institutions, and between institutions, nationwide and globally, who are dedicated to the open-source development of the platform.”
LOUIS wishes to continue to promote the innovation that comes from a strong, robust, and diverse standards-based marketplace. LOUIS has offered to contribute to integration and customization with its existing library services platforms, SirsiDynix Symphony and SirsiDynix Enterprise; integration with the Symphony web services API; and testing and feedback on all ReShare development. LOUIS also is making financial contributions to the project.
MOBIUS is a multi-type, multi-state library consortium based in Columbia, Missouri, with 77 members and 223 branches in Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas. The consortium includes large public and private universities, community colleges, small technical schools, special libraries, public libraries, and medical libraries.
MOBIUS currently uses Innovative Interfaces for Sierra for 61 of its academic libraries, with those libraries distributed across seven Sierra servers that are geographically grouped. A shared ILS is one of the main goals of the consortium, which currently uses INN-Reach as its resource sharing system. MOBIUS has been evaluating the future of its shared ILS model and resource sharing system.
“Our libraries have asked us to consider allowing disparate systems within our membership,” said Donna Bacon, Executive Director of MOBIUS. “Our biggest hurdle has been the inability to connect other systems to INN-Reach. We think Project ReShare is our best way forward as it will allow us to expand our membership even more than we have done in the last several years and allow our membership to choose an ILS they feel best fits their library. Resource sharing is still one of our primary goals, but how we meet that goal has changed and become more complicated. We believe Project ReShare can help us meet our goal of connecting disparate systems.”
In addition to financial contributions, MOBIUS will be contributing time and skills of developers, including a senior development engineer who has experience with open source projects, most significantly through contributions to Evergreen. As an indication of its commitment to open source projects, MOBIUS has an Associate Director Open Source Initiatives who manages open source services and projects.
As their consortium continues to move into the open source community, MOBIUS leaders are eager to contribute to Project ReShare.
Background
The ReShare Community is a group of libraries, consortia, information organizations and developers, with both commercial and non-commercial interests, who came together in 2018 to create Project ReShare – a new and open approach to library resource sharing. The ReShare Community has a bold vision for building a user-centered, app-based, community-owned resource sharing platform for libraries to set a new standard for how we connect library patrons to the resources and information they require.
For more information, contact info@projectreshare.org.
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Media Contact
Lisa Croucher
Triangle Research Libraries Network (TRLN): trln.org, Executive Director
Project ReShare: projectreshare.org, Communication Team, Chair
info@projectreshare.org