Global library cooperative Online Computer Library Center, Inc. (OCLC), US, has announced an alliance with IDS Project staff, creators of the Article Licensing Availability Service (ALIAS), and Atlas Systems staff, creators of ILLiad and Odyssey resource sharing management systems. The collaborative effort will seek to use holdings data and licence management tools to develop an integrated resource sharing solution for serials in any format.
By combining data from WorldCat, and querying OCLC and third-party knowledgebases and electronic rights management data to determine lenders, OCLC delivery services will offer automated processing for fulfillment of non-returnable materials. This makes it possible to streamline resource sharing workflow for copy requests with a particular emphasis on requests for electronic resources. At present, this process is labour-intensive.
The OCLC network-level delivery solution is intended to significantly improve the effective use of journal articles in libraries.
This solution is an effort to transform the IDS Project's ALIAS from a local, unmediated article service to a network-level solution serving more than 10,000 libraries worldwide. OCLC development staff will build the network-level service based on requirements gathered by OCLC product staff in concert with partner consortia, IDS Project and Atlas Systems staff. OCLC will provide WorldCat Resource Sharing and ILLiad libraries with the use of this network-level service at no additional charge.
A 2008 recipient of the Rethinking Resource Sharing Innovation Award, the IDS Project is a mutually supportive resource-sharing cooperative within New York State whose members include public and private academic libraries, the New York Public Library, and the New York State Library. The goal of the Project is to continually implement and objectively evaluate innovative resource-sharing strategies, policies and procedures that will optimise mutual access to the information resources of all IDS Project libraries.
