Resource Sharing

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

I had the opportunity to participate in an advisory capacity on two separate projects supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services in 2019. Both projects have recently published the results, and I feel the content is high-quality and valuable. Regardless of the size of your library or scope of service, I hope you will consider these tools. 

The Growing Providers Tool Kit includes lots of ideas and program models for how libraries can support child care. It also includes a Child Care Provider Resource Guide. 

Reaching young children and their families where they are means connecting child care providers. By 2021, there will be an estimated 856,238 U.S. child care operators, but there are still many areas of the country with child care deserts. Supporting child care providers is one of the key ways libraries can support children, families, communities, and small businesses. This tool kit is part of Brooklyn Public Library's Institute of Museum and Library Services-funded Growing Providers initiative and includes resources and descriptions of model programs from two model BPL programs: Growing Providers and Nanny & Me.

Opportunities and Vignettes for Library Makerspaces

This white paper was informed by the participants of the National Forum on Research and Assessment in Library Makerspaces, held at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, on August 6–7, 2019, generously supported by the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS), and co-led by Maker Ed and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The forum brought together 47 individuals, each of whom are leading efforts in and/or informing maker-centered learning, from various areas of library practice and research, including informal and formal educational institutions adjacent to the field. The paper is organized around four main themes: Defining Making and Libraries; Shared Considerations; Demonstrating Value and Making the Case; Recommendations for the Future. 

Concerning the focus on equity in Wisconsin, take a look at Consideration #1: Access and Equity in regard to who we serve (or not) and how.

Written By:
Tessa Michaelson Schmidt
Public Library Development

Image 1 source
Image 2 source