Initiative Review Group XIII Progress Report April 30, 2001

Maximize buying power by developing partnerships with other academic, research, and/or public libraries to form consirtial relationships at the state, national, and regional levels.

Members:

Michael Bland; Steve Chism; Sarah Santos; Kristine Shrauger

Currently.

Steve is working on a narrative format for the present setting and structure of existing consortia
Kristine worked out analyses of LVIS (Libraries Very Interested in Sharing) and ILL direct to homes service, in addition to several other issues relating to this initiative. Kris mentioned that she would find journal articles dealing with use of student teachers in a library's bibliographic instruction program. Sarah will ask Necia for a quick assessment to get her take on this, and report back to group.
Michael will work into PDF format to submit electronically
Sarah is working on description of how the initiative fits into the long-term goals and/or fulfills the mission of the University Libraries
Format for final report will involve the efforts of the four team members

Our meeting on Monday, April 23, concluded with the collective agreement that the bulk of our work is done; pulling together all the information gathered remains.

We have ranked the issues that need to be discussed concerning implementation of the initiative, and have come up with the following:

Mission Critical Issues:

Creation of a courier system on campus
University Libraries' Interlibrary Loan Department could become a member of "LVIS" (Libraries Very Interested in Sharing
Provide outreach library instruction with students and staff of junior high and high schools throughout Arkansas, providing them with distance education resources to assist them in writing research papers, sometimes a reasonably difficult proposition in remote areas
Establish a consortium with Fayetteville public schools and Washington County libraries to provide a courier service and look for easier methods for requesting interlibrary loan
Medical libraries in Arkansas could share in the National Library of Medicine's DOCLINE, a document delivery service from NLM's PubMed

Very Important Initiative:

Identify a few students per semester seeking to complete their student teaching requirement in adult education who may work with the University Libraries' Bibliographic Instruction Coordinator, Necia Parker-Gibson
Interlibrary Loan delivery direct to homes: part of the University's distance education program would include services to remote patrons
A shared circulation system throughout the University Libraries
Work with state agencies to collect state government documents/publications and to provide a place of record for them to be preserved
Revive cost-sharing ventures between Mullins and campus branch libraries

Seek grant funding to support many of these initiatives

Important but not essential to be developed in the first year of planning:

Universal library card for the state
Use consortial agreements to coordinate collection development throughout Arkansas libraries
Creation of an Arkansas Union List of Serials
Establish a "last copy in the state" program

The group determined that other initiative review groups that should be considered in connection to and coordinated with include: User Needs; Realignment of Resources; Preservation/Conservation; Collection Development; Full Text Resources; both Digitization groups; and Fund Raising.

Names of individuals who should be considered for the Planning Team responsible for implementing this initiative include: Alberta Bailey (in her role as University Libraries' Distance Education Coordinator); Janet Parsch (in her role as the University Libraries' ArkLink representative); Beth Juhl (for her work in electronic resources); Ki Peppers (courier systems; document delivery via 4^th class mail systems); Necia Parker-Gibson (as University Libraries' Bibliographic Instruction Coordinator, could assist in outreach efforts); Kristine Shrauger (ILL issues, which are many); Ann Waligorski (acquisitions issues); Marilyn Rogers (serials issues); and our future Collection Development Librarian.

We also talked about the possibility of a "grant-writer" position on the Library staff. Grants applications processes and the subsequent receipt and management of grant funds may better be handled in a centralized office of the Library. The Fund Raising IRG

may be in a position to investigate the feasibility of such an "office" to work closely with fund raising and development issues.

A final item, which will be addressed in upcoming discussions, is the group's recommendation on the amount of time required to effectively develop the plan for implementing the initiative. It has become apparent to group members that each of the above issues identified as being crucial to the initiative will necessarily have distinct time frames under which they may be implemented.