Library resource sharing: My hands-on experience

Circa March 2011: Locating “holds” at Lakeport library

The focus of my studies this week, for LIS 5804, is on library resource sharing and consortia. As a prior volunteer for a library system that contributed to a three-county shared catalog, I’ve had direct involvement with the sharing of resources among libraries.

Our textbook cites Section 54.500 of the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations with its definition of a library consortium: “any local, regional, or national cooperative association of libraries that provides for the systematic and effective coordination of the resources of school, public, academic, and special libraries and information centers, for improving services to the clientele of such libraries” (Bossaller, pp. 294-295).

The accompanying photo is circa March 2011; it depicts me locating and pulling requested items in the Lakeport library, part of the Lake County Library system. During the course of a shift, I might have looked for books, audio books, DVDs and music recordings (Parkhill, 2010). Elsewhere, my counterparts would work from similar lists at libraries in Lake, Mendocino, and Sonoma counties.

Once I’d located all the items on my list: “I scan their barcodes into the computer to get their routing information, prepare a tag that indicates where in our three-county library system each item is to go and finally I pack them for delivery” (ibid).

Sonoma County Library’s “Pathway of a hold” (p. 2) from its Winter 2010 newsletter, detailed what happens next after an item is packed: truck drivers head out in vehicles “loaded with books, CDs, and DVDs” and make the rounds among county libraries where, at each stop, they drop off and pick up requested items. Staffers at each library check in the items they’ve received, print out slips for the items, and put them on a shelf to await pick-up.

This issue of the SCL newsletter, published 12 to 13 years ago, is sentimental to me, because it encapsulates a resource-sharing procedure in which I had direct involvement. The items I located might be destined for a library in Lake, Sonoma, or Mendocino counties, and it greatly expanded available holdings for patrons in any one system.

As stated among our readings this week: “Since no library can afford to collect or provide access to all information, [interlibrary loan] services enable users of even the biggest research library collections to access locally unavailable information” (Posner, 2017, p. 4).

My current involvement with this combined library catalog is in the role of patron. I regularly place holds on items through the online catalog, and pick them up at the Sonoma County Library branch that is just a few blocks from my apartment.

Sonoma County Library contracted with Mendocino County in 1996 for “shared catalog and services” and with Lake County in 2000 for “shared catalog and services” (Hoskins, 2014).

These three libraries are part of a North Bay Cooperative Library System, serving Lake, Marin, Mendocino, Napa, Solano and Sonoma Counties; which is in turn part of the NorthNet Library System (NLS, n.d.).

The NorthNet Library System is a consolidation of three library systems: the Mountain Valley Library System (MVLS), serving Alpine, Colusa, El Dorado, Mono, Nevada, Placer, Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba Counties; North Bay Cooperative Library System (NBCLS), serving Lake, Marin, Mendocino, Napa, Solano and Sonoma Counties; and North State Cooperative Library System (NSCLS), serving Butte, Del Norte, Glenn, Humboldt, Lassen, Modoc, Plumas, Shasta, Sierra, Siskiyou, Tehama and Trinity Counties (ibid).

“The purpose of this new consolidated regional system is to improve the services of its constituent member libraries by maintaining existing CLSA (California Library Services Act) programs, leading research and development efforts to ensure that libraries are best positioned to respond to demographic, economic, and cultural changes through innovative and collaborative approaches to programming and services and the enhancement of collective resource building and sharing.

“This new system is part of a statewide effort as encouraged and supported by the California State Library to consolidate library systems throughout the state to achieve efficiencies and realize further economies of scale. There are currently fifteen systems in the state. Under the consolidation plan, ten of the fifteen systems in the state will be in three systems with five independent systems remaining.” (ibid)

NLS is one of nine total library consortia in California (California State Library, n.d.). These consortia are supported “through the Communications and Delivery Program of the California Library Services Act,” which is “specifically designed to assist and encourage such cooperation” (ibid). A 13-member California Library Services Board administers the program and allocates funding to California’s cooperative library systems (ibid).

References:
Bossaller, J.S. (2018). Collaboration and consortia. In McCook, K. & Bossaller, J.S., Introduction to public librarianship (pp. 293-320). Neal-Schuman.

California State Library. (n.d.) Cooperative systems and CLSA. Services: Services for California public libraries. https://www.library.ca.gov/services/to-libraries/ca-library-services-act/

Hoskins, T. (2014). History of the library. Sonoma County Library. https://sonomalibrary.org/about/history

NorthNet Library System (n.d.) About NLS. https://northnetlibs.org/about-nls/

Parkhill, C.M. (2011, April 10). Volunteering at Lakeport library. Cynthia Parkhill. https://cynthiaparkhill.blogspot.com/2010/04/volunteering-at-lakeport-library.html

Posner, B. (2017). Introduction to library information and resource sharing. Library information and resource sharing: Transforming services and collections. CUNY Academic Works. https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1319&context=gc_pubs

Sonoma County Library. (2010). Pathway of a hold: A behind-the-scenes look. Sonoma County Library newsletter, Winter 2010 [Wayback Machine]. http://bit.ly/3KISUgZ