Austin, Texas
May 18-20, 1994
Nancy Eaton
Iowa State University
MR. BLACK: We have a second committee that wishes to bring something forward to the meeting at this time. I will call on Nancy Eaton and Shirley Baker from the Access Committee.
MS. EATON (Iowa State University): You may remember that about four years ago, when the Committees were asked to provide input into the strategic plan for the organization, the white paper, "Maximizing Access, Minimizing Cost," by Shirley Baker and Mary Jackson, for the Access Committee resulted in several priorities. The first was to work on reconceptualization and redesign of interlibrary loan document delivery; the second was a call for a rearticulation of the principles and ethics of resource sharing. Interestingly, those two things are coming together.
I have asked Shirley Baker who chairs the subcommittee on the document projects, to give you a brief background statement on the draft you have before you for users interested in information access and delivery services as a strategic vision, and then we would like to have some discussion. What we hope to have out of this is an endorsement of this vision statement in the form of a motion, or enough feedback that the Committee can continue to refine the document. What you have in draft is the result of discussion at yesterday morning's Committee meeting.
MS. BAKER (Washington University, St. Louis): The North American Interlibrary Document Delivery Project (NAILDD) has done a number of things in terms of progressing toward development of a way of accounting and reimbursing for interlibrary loan, in terms of moving ahead and encouraging the development of management systems for interlibrary loan, and in the development of standards that will allow these things to happen. We are beginning to see that there are going to be products from all parts of the community available early next calendar year. We are very excited about that.
A third part of the project's work was to work on what we call deconstruction and reconstruction of interlibrary loan. As we tested that process, we held a workshop for members of the Access Committee, who came together with other staff from their institutions, from the director on down the line to the interlibrary loan librarian. We had a number of participants in two-and-a-half-day workshop in February. One key issue that was raised there immediately by the practitioners was "the need to have a vision for the future environment." Some of the efforts of that workshop were to pull out this vision.
You have in front of you a draft of this strategic vision. It basically outlines the current situation and the evolving situation where, through various information infrastructures, policy users can do many things for themselves. I should say that many of the Access Committee members believe that the focus of the NAILDD projects should be on activities of greatest benefit to users allowing them to do such things as--searching law catalogs, transferring citations to electronic requests--things that are available in many places or are beginning to be more available.
Passing requests through the online catalog, whether any of you own them, is something we all hope will happen soon. Users, in some cases, are now able to pass their own requests to suppliers or to another library, communicate with that supplier electronically and ultimately receive some of these items on their desktops. This is an emerging environment. We see that individual libraries will form the policies for which of these services they make available and how they handle the cost complications. We see that while this is a user-centered vision, the library is still a key agent in this and will continue to serve an important role.
We see that the success of traditional interlibrary loan on emergency services is going to be a key success factor in the coming age. To achieve a vision like this requires that libraries to work among themselves and with a broad range of other groups, including documents suppliers, automation vendors, and other information providers.
When this was discussed at the Board, and when it was discussed in the Committee, the two important points emerged. One was the way that costs are handled and the role of the local library in determining what services should be offered. The second point that was emphasized was how important our library automation vendors are to making these things happen. We have covered both points in this Access Statement. This discussion is open for questions and comments; Nancy and I will field them as best we can.
MR. BILLINGS (University of Texas): Let me confess to some ongoing personal concerns about unmediated interlibrary lending requests, specifically, as they apply to physical objects. There are a couple of elements that might perhaps explain my position in terms of this document. To begin with, if we had something that commented on the library role in educating users--potentially those folks who might be using a mediated access mechanism, then we would have a better idea that there was an educated judgment that was being made based on the training provided by librarians to these prospective clients. Second, there would not be this feeling that I have of willy-nilly requests going out, resulting in physical objects coming back to interlibrary service points of receipt and accumulating, to be returned at whose expense and work other than the library, which has had no real control over the activity that is involved here. These two points reflect most of my concerns about this kind of vision.
MS. BAKER: Let me comment on both of those. This statement does not imply that it is necessarily unmediated. It implies that it can be user-initiated, but in fact a number of the systems, both the utilities and local library systems, do allow for library mediation in the way those requests would then go forward. The statement does not make an assumption about that. It is a local library decision.
Likewise, in terms of instructions to users, a lot of that will depend upon system design, and screen formatting and the implementation group is working on this. For instance, we consistently insist that, as vendors suggested, you be able to charge libraries. The other side of that also was obvious in the screens: that it was very apparent that there are multiple ways that a user can get at it and make some of those selections. The intent of this document is not to say how all of this will be done but that it could be user-initiated.
MR. BILLINGS: I do not think the document speaks to the issues I have raised, and I believe this results in the apparent abrogation of the library community in terms of being assured we have done the best we can in instructing or helping inform library users as to how to make use of this system.
MS. EATON: Is there a general feeling that that is a problem with the document? Can I see a show of hands from those who feel that it is a problem? How many of those do not feel that is an issue that should be articulated in the document? It is about two to one, two-thirds saying it is not an issue, and one-third saying it is an issue. Given that, I think we need to clarify that it is a local option, a local decision.
MR. BENNETT (Johns Hopkins University): I really wanted to address a different point, but if I could just say one word about this: I believe the issue that Harold identified is a real issue and we are going to have to work on it. Speaking for myself, I greatly welcome the direction in which this document points us.
I would also like to address the issue of financial strategies for controlling costs even as these user-centered services evolve. As a community, we need to move away from a barter-based sense of interlibrary services and resource sharing, because until we do that, we have financial strategies that are needs-shaped, not by users but by our own need to balance our budgets. We have just gotten away from that order of economy. If we are willing to direct requests to document delivery services, then we ought to be willing to direct requests to other libraries with the willingness to pay. The fact is that library resources are not evenly distributed in this country, and it seems foolish to insist upon barter arrangement where the resources are not arranged that way.
MS. BAKER: That certainly is an issue that we talked about at great length. There is a broad range of opinions from those involved in the projects. We have tried to move the project along in such a way that it does not foreclose options. The last time we took a sense of the membership, there was no agreement on which direction it might go. In fact, we were split pretty much down the middle.
MR. SHAUGHNESSY (University of Minnesota): I like the statement. But you use the words "a strategic vision" as used in the title, and to me it is not quite visionary enough. It reflects too much of where we are and is not enough of a vision. It is too focused, it seems to me, on the documents rather than information, on material, the print-on-paper research materials.
Secondly it does not do enough to emphasize efficiently or explicitly the multimedia environment that we are in. The last bullet, for example, addresses books, data, full or image copy of non-material documents, but it seems to me that the multimedia environment we are in should be reflected there, and that user-center information access and delivery may be quite separate and apart from many of the bullets. This needs to get "beyond bibliography," to use Folen Brown's old phrase, and it does not sufficiently do that to be called a "vision" statement.
MS. EATON: Two replies. First is, I believe in the first bullet the intent was that this goes beyond bibliography. The second is, perhaps the better language would be "strategic direction." This is very much an iterative process, and the particular language here came out of the group of people who are trying to envision how to move this forward. We are trying to respond to that rather than to articulate the long-term vision. Would you be more comfortable with strategic direction?
MS. BAKER: One of the characteristics of the NAILDD project all along has been its non-"blue sky" character. It is "how do we get through the next couple of years and keep our service standards high?" That makes it not quite as visionary as one might desire, but conveys some feeling that that kind of action might be necessary.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: It occurred to me, in the very last paragraph where you talk about achieving vision requiring a certain number of things, that one of the remaining hurdles in a lot of campuses is not the willingness of the library to move forward or even the presence of a network, but the lack of the proper equipment in the hands of the end users. So that, even if you have the capability to send material out from the library in the digital form, particularly when you talk about multimedia, there is no receiving capacity at the other end. It might be wise to add to the list of things commitment and focus on our various campuses to work toward achieving the necessary infrastructure to support this vision, which is there in degrees depending on where you are.
MS. EATON: The language was specifically aimed at saying that desktop delivery was one option but will not be the only option for quite some time for just the reason that you have articulated: not everyone has the receiving equipment. Whether this is the appropriate vehicle to encourage the other activities, I am not sure.
MR. FASANA (New York Public Library): As a library that is just now starting to try to implement document delivery service on campus, I wanted to speak in support of the scope of this draft. One of the things it does for me, if it is able to be used on my campus, is it permits me to deal with faculty who are seeking evolutionary change versus revolutionary changes. I have many faculty who still want to talk about the effectiveness of interlibrary loan along with talking about document delivery. This provides a vehicle for making that transformation with the imprint of the Association on it, so I find it very useful.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I would like to encourage the committee to do a couple of things that might make the document a little more useful on campuses. This speaks partly to the resources question because when we propose strategic investigations or directions to our libraries, there is always a built-in assumption that the people that we are serving know how to use these things. We have to consciously recognize that along with the development of these kinds of capabilities we have to assume some responsibility for assuring that users get proper instruction not only for the local services but for remote services as well. As they become more complex, this becomes a more demanding responsibility for the libraries.
Also, as just a minor plug in the same direction, we are concerned about being able to get the hardware and to be able to do some of these things, but we cannot forget that many of our libraries do not have the technical support staff to be able to operate these kind of systems, so that if we can give the resources I believe it would make the document a little more useful on campuses.
MS. BAKER: Other comments? We have more editing to do. The three issues that I hear you saying we should add are: clarify the library's role in mediation for those who wish to design their systems that way; add a section on the responsibility of libraries for instruction for users or clients; and focus on the need for development of staff and for having alternative methods of delivery. Is that a fair summary?
MR. BILLINGS: What about the finances--paying for interlibrary loans.
MS. BAKER: The committee's position on that is it is a local decision. We are proceeding down that path because we do not have the sense of the membership.
MR. NEAL (Indiana University): One element that I would recommend we get is some type of daily analysis capability. That might sound administratively driven, but I believe the ability to capture that information throughout a system would enable us to understand user patterns and ultimately be able to improve the quality of the system itself.
MS. BAKER: Certainly, in the specifications for management of the interlibrary loan document delivery system, a system for data collection for analysis is one that we keep calling on.
MR. BLACK: It is certainly a goal to make this as user-driven as is possible, but the variety of options is too myriad, given the number of the systems, the numbers of databases, etc., to try to make a definitive statement about that.
MR. BENNETT: I am afraid I am going to beat this horse once more. The reason I speak about moving away from a barter system is that a couple of years ago I participated in an effort to create a regional resource-sharing enterprise that failed exactly because people were looking at their ability to sustain the department. Now, what I have to say about that is that the losers were not libraries, you know. Our books remain balanced. The losers were readers. As long as we straddle this fence and say we can not deal with it because we are divided on it, the losers will continue to be readers.
MS. BAKER: It is quite possible that when the emphasis is on speed and reliability there might be more cost-recovery suppliers entering the arena, and some of those might be libraries. Those will be chosen for use because they are fast and they are good.
It has been quite clear in this whole process that there are sections of the library community outside ARL who would be very concerned about ARL taking a unified position that we are going to charge everyone. Part of the success of the project requires that we work with the broader library community, because we have to, above all, improve ourselves. Thus, we backed off, and there is an agreement. So we hear you.
MR. BLACK: This process is more heavily political than we expected. We spent most of our time at ALA presenting with the various ALA committees, so this is not just an ARL initiative. There are strong views within the committee, from Malcolm Getz probably feeling strongest, with Martin Runkle right behind him, that this should be totally self-sufficient cost recovery, to others who really feel that there are certainly consortia that would make exceptions for everybody if they were heavily self-supported. There is not a uniform view.
The committee's position at this point is that it is going to have to evolve and that some of this will come over time. We have had the most resistance, frankly, from the librarians who do not want anything charged and have resisted any kind of change, to the utilities that would allow for resource load leveling and only billing to lenders because they think it would increase charging. That is the spectrum that we are dealing with in terms of this particular issue.
MR. STUBBS: Just a quick statement. I just want to say that I believe the committee has done a terrific job. I like the speed with which they have moved, the involvement that they have gotten from a large group of people and a large number of our libraries, and I want to echo what Paul said about use on campus but also use within our libraries. It is this kind of thing that helps us sell this as a primary service rather than a secondary service.
MR. BLACK: In fact, the initiative is from the staffs who participated in this workshop who feel they needed a statement of this sort in order to be clear about the direction that they are going and that we are behind them. Any other comments?
We will take it back for further work. Thank you very much, Nancy. The discussion cast light on your efforts and moves us forward considerably. Thank you all for your comments today. I am sure the committee will continue from a subsequent version.