Resource Sharing

Please note the date of this article. Information regarding COVID-19 is constantly evolving. We encourage you to review current information in the the Wisconsin Public Libraries Reopening Guide and the COVID-19 page for Wisconsin public libraries.

In a webinar hosted by IMLS entitled "Mitigating COVID-19 When Managing Paper-Based, Circulating, and Other Types of Collections," Dr. David Berendes, phD, MSPH, epidemiologist in the Waterborne Disease Prevention Branch of the CDC focusing on global sanitation and hygiene issues, stated that 24 hours is an acceptable duration for materials quarantine. Dr. Berendes added that the CDC is not concerned about books and other paper-based items (including mail and shipped packages) as a mode of transmission of the virus. As such, either disinfection of hard surfaces that tolerate wiping with the appropriate chemical disinfectants, or a 24 hour materials quarantine will suffice. Dr. Berendes advised using these CDC cleaning and disinfecting instructions, which includes a link to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's "List N" disinfectants that meet EPA’s criteria for use against SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes the disease COVID-19. Hard, nonporous surfaces are the focus of epidemiological concern.

In addition, Dr. Berendes outlined the steps to be taken if you suspect that your work environment has been exposed to COVID-19:

1. Close off the area that the individual used most for as long as possible, up to 24 hours. Note that stagnant areas such as vehicles would require a longer time, whereas environments with good airflow require less time. A well ventilated space may only need a few hours of quarantine.

2. After quarantine, clean the space thoroughly:

   • Hard, nonporous surfaces should be cleaned with soap or detergent and then disinfected with a disinfecting agent found on the EPA’s List N. These include all hard, high-touch surfaces and items like doorknobs, tabletops. Etc.

   • Soft, porous surfaces such as carpeting, rugs, and drapes should be laundered or cleaned if possible. Fortunately, these surfaces are of less concern because the ability of the virus to release itself in an infectious state from soft surfaces once it has settled into them is unlikely. (This guidance applies to office and public facility space; plush toys and other soft items should be laundered.)

   • Electronics and such items should be wiped or sprayed with a solution containing at least 70% alcohol.

   • Personal protective equipment used by custodial staff should be put on, taken off, and disposed of correctly. Please see the CDC’s cleaning and disinfecting instructions for details.

3. Encourage proper hand hygiene at all times, per CDC guidelines. This includes wearing disposable gloves, washing hands for 20 seconds with soap and water, using hand sanitizer that contains at least 60% alcohol, and avoiding touching the eyes, nose, and mouth.

This information is not comprehensive. For complete instructions, refer to the CDC’s webpage on Cleaning and Disinfecting Your Facility: Everyday Steps, Steps When Someone is Sick, and Considerations for Employers.

Submitted by Shannon Schultz, Division for Libraries and Technology

Recollection Wisconsin Digital Projects Toolkit and other professional development opportunities for digitization projects

The Recollection Wisconsin Digital Projects Toolkit is a free online course covering the basics of digitization projects. https://recollection-wisconsin.thinkific.com/ There are 5 modules -- project planning, copyright, scanning, metadata, and storage -- that each take around 30 minutes to complete. The course was created by Recollection Wisconsin in 2016 with support from WPLC, and updated in 2019 to go along with the DPI-funded digitization kits for public library systems.

The Digital Stewardship Curriculum from the Sustainable Heritage Network (Washington State University) covers all aspects of the Digital Stewardship Lifecycle - bringing materials in, managing and organizing materials, preserving materials, and providing access to materials. The curriculum is intended for cultural heritage professionals working in or with Indigenous communities but many of the topics are also replicable for small, non-Indigenous institutions. http://sustainableheritagenetwork.org/digital-stewardship-curriculum-page

The DPLA Service Hubs in Minnesota and Pennsylvania have created great resources for understanding copyright issues and assigning standardized rights statements for digitized cultural heritage materials. The Minnesota Digital Library’s video training sessions offer helpful steps for choosing standardized rights statements. https://mndigital.org/standards-best-practices/rights-statements-resources PA Digital’s recorded webinars include a general overview of copyright as well as specific rights issues for oral histories and newspapers. https://padigital.org/rights-resources/

The Connecting To Collections Care Community (Foundation for Advancement in Conservation) addresses digital preservation in a series of five recorded webinars called “Caring for Digital Materials: Preventing a Digital Dark Age.” https://www.connectingtocollections.org/archivedigital/

The Northeast Document Conservation Center has an archive of free recorded webinars on topics like grant writing for audiovisual digitization projects. They also regularly offer fee-based live and on-demand webinars on preservation and access for both digital and physical archives.. https://www.nedcc.org/preservation-training/training-currentlist

Questions, suggestions? Please contact guest blogger Emily Pfotenhauer at emily@wils.org   Posted by Cindy Fesemyer.

Note:  This was originally written by Josh Steans and posted in April, 2016.  Recently libraries have been asking for ideas on ways to show the value of their ILL programs. This article is a good place to start.

For all libraries, the push of user expectations counters the pull of rising costs, budget gaps, and an aggressively shifting information technology landscape. Strategic decisions emerge from this scrum with the objective of providing as many relevant resources to as many patrons as possible, and to do so as often, and as simply as possible.

Resource Sharing is no exception. In fact, more than perhaps any library service, Resource Sharing is remarkably transparent, with each transaction offering a microcosm of the whole library enterprise: acquisitions and metadata for holdings and discovery; reference to help patrons find and request an item; ILL to quickly, cost-effectively, and compliantly source it; lending ILL to screen, pull, update, and ship the item (plus their own Circ staff to keep it in the right place); ILL to receive it, connect loose ends of the transaction and plug the business end of it all into the Circ department; and then Circ to hand the item to the patron. Quite some effort to get one item for one patron.

And what does all that effort cost? First, one caveat: Resource Sharing is the only library service that has periodically undergone thorough cost studies. The anecdotal estimates for some other library services—$95 to add a book to the collection (after purchase); $105 for a reference question; $10 to simply store an item for one year—outpace even the highest estimates for Resource Sharing.

As for those Resource Sharing costs, another caveat: there’s no clear answer. Great variability exists between loans and articles, in-consortium and out-of-consortium transactions, lending and borrowing, academic and public, true Resource Sharing and commercial services. There are at least 10 cost categories, each with a different benchmark. Estimates range from a low of about $3-$4 per transaction to a high of $9-$17. The highest end of this spectrum comes from out of date research: ARL studies from 1993 and 2003 that were conducted at large research universities. In addition to skewing heavily toward high-budget university libraries, these studies predate modern Resource Sharing tools, workflow efficiencies, and hiring/staffing practices. More recent research, published in 2012, benchmarks the average cost of transactions at about $4-$9. For the most meaningful cost picture, each library should run its own numbers. 

Regardless of exact numbers, there are universally accepted trends: consortium transactions and lending articles cost the least, borrowing articles are in the middle, and the undisputed heavyweight high cost champion (notwithstanding commercial document services) is out-of-network borrowing loans. But ranges trend higher and lower according staffing levels (ft/pt, librarian, assistant, clerk, page/student, etc.), policies, workflow efficiencies, and request volume at individual libraries.

Here’s one fact we can nail down: staffing is the biggest cost factor, and there’s no close second. But this is true of all library services and should come as no surprise. After staff, the other standard costs are: request systems, management tools, lender fees, shipping, equipment, and supplies. As mentioned above, the objective should be to get the most out of what you have. We know that when the number of transactions increases, the average cost declines. Implementing sustainable policies and workflows that encourage increased volume will lower the cost of each transaction and add value for users.

Posted by:  Christine Barth, Resources for Libraries and Lifelong Learning

We have scheduled the quarterly ILL/WISCAT User Group meetings for 2020. Please save the dates. We have chosen different days of the week and meeting times in an effort to cover different library staff schedules. Agendas and log on information will be sent two weeks before the scheduled date.

• Wednesday, February 12, 10-11am                                                              
• Thursday, May 7, 11-12am
• Tuesday, August 4, 1-2pm
• Tuesday, November 10, 10-11am

If there are topics you would like included in these sessions please let us know. At this time, possible topics include:

• ILL best practices
• Searching
• Request creation
• Lending responsibilities
• Request manager
• Participant record

The sessions will be recorded if you are unable to attend. Watch for more information on the WISCAT ILL listserv. If you do not subscribe to the list, please send a blank email to join-illwiscatlist@lists.dpi.wi.gov

Written by:  Christine Barth, Resources for Libraries and Lifelong Learning