Author: Project ReShare

May 17, 2021

Project ReShare is pleased to welcome Minitex and the Ann Arbor District Library to the ReShare community. Current ReShare membership is available on the Project ReShare web site.

Minitex is a state-funded library organization based at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities that provides resource sharing and delivery to libraries of all types in Minnesota – school media centers, public and academic libraries, state agency and health science libraries.

Gerri Moeller, Associate Director for Resource Sharing and Delivery, explained the Minitex process for evaluating ReShare and deciding to apply for membership. “For the past few months, we have been meeting with representatives from Project ReShare, reviewing the documentation, discussing our needs for a future resource sharing system, and viewing demonstrations of the current state of the project,”  Moeller said. “We’re really intrigued with the possibilities, and excited to become a member of this project.” 

The Minitex MNLINK service allows any patron in the state to search a Minnesota instance of WorldCat, or extend that service out to the full WorldCat catalog, then directly place an unmediated request. Items from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities are filled, free of charge, by Minitex staff for any resident of the state. In 2020, Minitex delivered 732,000 items, referred almost 400,000 requests, and facilitated  over 250,000 direct patron requests.  Minitex provides many other services to libraries and cultural heritage institutions in Minnesota, including a robust statewide database, an online reference service, a statewide ebook collection, cooperative purchasing services, a statewide historical digitized collection, and a high-density storage facility. The organization is just wrapping up its four-year involvement in a project funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to work with SimplyE. 

Among the Minitex contributions to Project ReShare are three years of financial support, participation on Project ReShare committees and teams, and staff expertise, especially in integration and deployment of SimplyE. 

The Ann Arbor District Library (AADL) serves approximately 160,000 residents in the city of Ann Arbor, Michigan and other parts of Washtenaw County. Its five locations are staffed by about 200 employees, including eight staff members in the information technology department. 

AADL has a long-standing commitment to information technology and open source software. It administers its own Evergreen instance and a “homegrown” catalog and integration built on Drupal and Elasticsearch. “AADL is deeply committed to open source and collaboratively developed software,” noted Eli Neiburger, Deputy Director of AADL. “We’re interested in open source alternatives to our current patron-initiated interload system. We want to support efforts to develop an open platform.”

AADL will be providing three years of financial support to the project.

Background

April 5, 2021

Project ReShare is pleased to announce three new members that increase the diversity of the project, both in types of organizations and geography — Auraria Library, Stanford University Libraries, and the Western North Carolina Library Network. 

Auraria Library, located in downtown Denver, serves three institutions of higher education on one campus: University of Colorado Denver (CU Denver), Metropolitan State University of Denver (MSU Denver), and Community College of Denver (CCD). Auraria Library serves a diverse population and supports various curricular and research programs. MSU Denver & CCD are Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) and 48% of CU Denver’s students identify as students of color. The vision of the Auraria campus when created in the 1970’s was one of consolidation and collaboration; a place where a student could attend community college, transfer to a 4-year college, and go on to earn a graduate degree all on the same campus. While that vision has changed over the years as each institution has carved out its own identity, the library continues to be one of the few shared resources and services. 

Auraria is actively striving to change the future of resource sharing. The SILLVR pilot project, launched in January 2020, is the first library-to-library streaming video borrowing project in the country. Auraria Library in collaboration with the Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries secured streaming video partners to continue the project into 2021. The consortium also was chosen to partner with ProQuest to launch a new EBook ILL pilot in 2021. 

“Auraria Library cares deeply about equity of access to content, collaboration, and reimagining the future of ILL,” explained, Katy DiVittorio, Collections Strategies, Department Head. “This is one of our primary reasons for wanting to join Project ReShare.” Auraria is contributing financial resources, working group participation, and workflow expertise gained from SILLVR implementation.

Stanford Libraries has a tradition of commitment to open source tools, their development, and their communities, including work with Blacklight, IIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework), and most recently in the resource sharing sphere of the Ivy Plus Library Confederation. Stanford Libraries appreciates the flexibility and scalability of the ReShare platform, notably its interoperability with a variety of integrated library systems and the plans for non-returnables and controlled digital lending, which will enable Stanford Libraries to work more efficiently with lending partners and consortia. 

The governance of Project ReShare also aligns with the values and culture of Stanford Libraries. “The shared governance model that enables community input and the focus of the project on usability from the very beginning offers an environment well suited to responding to our patrons’ changing resource sharing needs,” explained Hilary Thorsen, Resource Sharing Librarian. Stanford has recently become actively engaged with the FOLIO community and is interested in monitoring and contributing to potential synergies among the two projects.  

Stanford Libraries has made a three-year financial commitment to Project ReShare and plans to actively participate in working groups to help define and apply best practices, including possible integrations with Blacklight. 

The Western North Carolina Library Network (WNCLN) is a three-member consortium consisting of the western North Carolina academic institutions of Western Carolina University; the University of North Carolina, Asheville; and Appalachian State University. WNCLN currently shares an ILS (III Sierra), runs a book delivery service between the three institutions, jointly licenses shared e-resources, and shares professional expertise among staff. The Network has a long history of resource sharing and commitment to sharing collections and expertise and wants to expand that commitment to library users across the state of North Carolina and beyond.

Consortial resource sharing is a strategic priority for WNCLN and integral to two current endeavors — a shared print initiative with other UNC libraries and migration to a new library services platform. Project ReShare could serve as the technical infrastructure to provide streamlined resource sharing services between WNCLN, the Triangle Research Libraries Network (TRLN), other NC universities, and other neighboring consortia. 

“The vision of Project ReShare aligns with the mission of WNCLN to foster active cooperation and collaboration among member libraries,” said Kristin Calvert, Head of Discovery and Technology Services, Western Carolina University. “We are eager to participate in this collaborative community and to contribute to its important work — work that is timely for us.”

Like Auraria Library and Stanford Libraries, WNCLN will contribute financially and also will provide staff for web development and VuFind development. Project ReShare enthusiastically welcomes these new members and their many contributions.

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.

To receive email updates from Project ReShare, please sign up for the Project ReShare news list at https://projectreshare.org/contact.

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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

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.

To receive email updates from Project ReShare, please sign up for the Project ReShare news list at https://projectreshare.org/contact.

# # #

Media Contact

Lisa Croucher
Triangle Research Libraries Network (TRLN): trln.org, Executive Director
Project ReShare: projectreshare.org, Communication Team, Chair
info@projectreshare.org

ReShare has been selected by two consortia, PALCI and ConnectNY, as their resource sharing program. Both organizations are partnering with Index Data for implementation, hosting, and support services, with plans to launch the service in summer 2021.

This adoption expands the prevalence of the ReShare Returnables product in the resource sharing marketplace and further demonstrates that ReShare is meeting a previously unmet need of libraries and consortia.

More details can be found in the Index Data news release.