Orbis Cascade Alliance and WorldCat Navigator

Orbis Cascade AllianceOrbis Cascade Allianceand WorldCat Navigatorand WorldCat Navigator

Kyle BanerjeeDigital Services Program Manager

October 9, 2009NISO Forum

Orbis Cascade Alliance

36 institutions in Oregon & WashingtonPrivate & Public, 2-year & 4-year

Colleges, Universities, Community collegesMembers serving 600 – 42,000 students (FTE)

Major Programs

Electronic Resources• 62 libraries in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Hawaii• Databases, ejournals, ebooks, etc.

Northwest Digital Archives• 31 libraries and archives in Oregon, Washington, Idaho,

Montana, and Alaska• EAD finding aids, union database, digital content

Summit Resource Sharing System• 36 academic institutions in Oregon and Washington• 9.2 million unique titles, 28.7 million items• WorldCat Navigator 2009 +• INN-Reach 1993-2008• All members use III Integrated Library System

Major Programs

Conferences & Workshops• ARL/ACRL Institute on Scholarly Communication • Code4Lib Northwest

Cooperative Collection Development• YBP agreement• Distributed Print Repository

Courier Service • 280 libraries served through 80 dropsites in Oregon,

Washington, & Idaho• 400,000 packages per year

Digital Services• Digital collections, institutional repositories, etc.

Summit Fulfillments: FY03-08

What do we care about?

Service

Training

Satisfaction

How do we get those things?

Global

Regional

Local

•Work at the highest appropriate level

How do we get those things? (cont)

• Identify common operations and redundancies

• Leverage existing data (e.g. barcodes already on the piece) and systems (e.g. authentication mechanisms)

• Standardize on well designed tools and processes (e.g. paging slips, physical processing, etc)

• Simplify, streamline, and automate repetitive tasks

• Avoid manual processes such as searching, keying information, or transcription wherever possible

What is WorldCat Navigator?

A hosted resource sharing platform (not an ILS)

• Discovery experience based on WorldCat Group (a multi library version of WorldCat Local)

• Delivery based on Navigator Request Engine (NRE)• Circulation functions (paging, most alerting, billing,

check in/out) currently handled by local ILS

What makes Navigator special?

• Consortial borrowing support–Much greater efficiency (42% better on lending side)– Based on trust and shared information– Requests based on real time availability– Interfaces with existing ILS– Load balancing

• Patrons make local, consortial and ILL requests using a single process

• Circulation Gateway allows NRE to “talk” to your local ILS when standards based protocols are not supported

• Hosted at OCLC

WorldCat Local Individual library catalog based on Worldcat.org discovery interface

WorldCat GroupWorldCat Local instance that contains holdings of multiple libraries

Navigator Request EngineStaff interface with resource sharing functionality

Motivations for the migration

A better patron experience• More things that patrons need are not physically in the library, so

improved discovery is needed• Patron shouldn’t need to know where something is before searching

for it or ordering it. A patron who needs two books should use the same mechanism to request both

• One set of credentials gets you everything

Strategic benefits• Move towards network level services and reduction of redundant

systems and workflows• Standards based solution essential for long term viability and bringing

disparate services together• Leadership opportunity• Partnership with OCLC

Timeline

March 21, 2008• Board decision to work with OCLC to develop Navigator• Implementation Team and workgroups formed

October 15• WorldCat Navigator delivered

November• Work out bugs, get trainers and staff up to speed

December 1• Showtime!

How we spent our time

Holdings reclamation• WorldCat Local and Navigator depend on accurate

holdings data

Configuration• In NRE: Request managing locations, shelf and

pickup locations, notices, institutional patrons, paging slips, holds, etc

• Hundreds, possibly thousands of parameters• At local sites (varies with ILS): network

connectivity, indexing, reclamation, accounts, holds, paging slips, firewall, load tables, templates

How we spent our time (continued)

Training/Communication• Hundreds of staff affected• Circ/ILL reconfiguration• Faculty and patrons need to be informed• Managing the jitters

Developing components• “Resolver Resolver”• ILL Resolver• Batch paging slips

The “Resolver resolver”

Paging slip

Consortial workflow and fairness is important

Load balancing ensures all institutions benefit/contribute• Before automated load balancing, only 11% institutions have

received/shipped ratio between 0.9 and 1.1.• Huge disparities. Worst ratio is 9.1

After using automatic load balancing for two months• 86% of membership has shipped/received ratio between 0.9

and 1.1 • About 3/5 of libraries have ratio between 0.95 and 1.05• Worst ratio is 1.1 (11 items received for every 10 lent)• Expect rates to improve with time

Navigator resource sharing at a glance

Works! Needs improvement

Patron experience• Discovery of Summit & WorldCat

materials• Integrate local, consortial, ILL

borrowing• Redirection of ILL and OpenURL

requests

• Local electronic holdings• Edition selection needs to be

more intelligent

Staff experience• Place holds• Load balancing • Paging• Autocreate temp bibs and items• Barcode tracking• OpenURL in email alerts

• More elegant pick up anywhere and visiting patron functionality

• Renewals

Side effects vary by institution

• Consortial borrowing is down • ILL is up, particularly for nonreturnables. • Some institutions report increased use of

electronic resources.• Staff workload manageable at all sites• Fulfillment rates down. Consortia wide since

going live is 82%. Worst institution is 75%.• Fulfillment times are up• Relatively few complaints

What lies ahead?

The network ILS• Do we really need to search, download, and catalog the same

record 36 times?• Should authority control, serials publication patterns, vendor

data, etc really be that different at different institutions? • Network circ allows easy formation of arbitrary groups

Shared catalog• Best level to deliver service may be at consortial rather than

global level

Resource sharing requires compatibility• Standardization at service and protocol level• Must play well in mixed environments

Transforming good ideas into reality

Make it work, make it fast, make it slick (in that order)• Don’t get distracted by the small stuff

Buy in is critical• Communication is key for having people take ownership

of the process• Understanding pain points is essential to maintaining

credibility with front line workers• Find ways to productively engage people

Progress requires upsetting the status quo• Collaborative efforts cause discomfort and local change• Doing things halfway to appease those raise concerns

can make the pain far worse…

Questions?Questions?

Kyle BanerjeeDigital Services Program Manager

October 9, 2009NISO Forum