John F. Helmer Executive Director Orbis Cascade Alliance

1. Partnerships Between Libraries: meeting patron needs through collaborationNorthwest Interlibrary Loan and Resource Sharing Conference September 16, 2005 John F. Helmer Executive Director Orbis Cascade Alliance

2. “Now it's a very difficult job and the only way to get through it is we all work together as a team and that means you do everything I say.” -- Michael Caine as Charlie Croker in The Italian Job.

3. Orbis Cascade Alliance Oregon & Washington Private & Public 2-year and 4-year community colleges, private colleges, public research universities

4. 33 Members Central Oregon Comm. College Central Washington University Clark College Eastern Oregon University Eastern Washington University George Fox University Lane Community College Lewis & Clark College Linfield College Mt. Hood Community College Oregon State University Oregon Health & Science Univ. Oregon Institute of Technology Oregon State University Pacific University Portland Community College Portland State University Reed College Saint Martin’s College Seattle Pacific University Seattle University Southern Oregon University The Evergreen State College University of Oregon University of Portland University of Puget Sound University of Washington Walla Walla College Washington State University Western Oregon University Western Washington University Whitman College Willamette University 7 Puget Sound 5 Eastern 17 Willamette Valley 2 Central Cascade Range 2 Southern

5. Major Services Summit Courier Service Electronic Resources Conferences & Workshops

6. Summit Union Catalog summit.orbiscascade.org

7. 8.1 million unique titles 26 million items 65% unique

8. Items loaned: FY03-05

9. Courier Service www.orbiscascade.org/courier/ 244 libraries served through 62 dropsites in Oregon, Washington, & Idaho 24-48 hour delivery 300,000 packages / year

10. Why collaborate? 1990’s 2000’s Network Robustness Bandwidth Access Standard client Wireless, PDA, etc. Digital products Growing Many & growing Budgets Tight Very tight Central funding Yes ? Expectations Rising High & rising Competition Rising Rising Risk Rising High

11. Successes over the recent past • Electronic resource purchasing • Continuing education, sharing information, professional development • ILL & other resource sharing systems • - Sharing physical collections • - Sharing digital collections • Courier service • Digital reference

12. Successes over the near future? • Physical Asset Repository • Digital Asset Repository • Collaboration beyond “membership”

13. Physical Asset Repository www.orbiscascade.org/rlsc/ • High density storage • Library buildings put to best use • Cooperative collection development • Home for other collaborative projects - Digitization - Preservation - Instruction

16. Digital Asset Repository • AKA : • Digital objects repository • Institutional repository • Collecting, organizing, and preserving intellectual property produced by member institutions (e.g., articles, data sets, software, images, moving images, sound, etc.) • Digitizing physical assets owned by member institutions • Providing access to all digital assets across disciplines, material types, and institutions.

17. Collaboration Beyond Membership • Serving non-members directly • Collaboration with vendors, computing centers, publishers, patrons • Collaboration among consortia • Informal communication • Formal programmatic affiliation • Merged programs • Changing outdated organizations • Creating umbrella or coordinating organizations • Merging consortia

18. John F. Helmer Executive Director jhelmer@uoregon.edu 541.346.1835