Fast and economical access to the books themselves is provided through the Boston Region delivery system. A FLO cooperative collection development policy broadens the resources of each separate library, making the whole resemble a highly sophisticated university library system. It affords individual libraries the benefit of highly qualified central staff to run the system and be available to consult on automation issues in member libraries. Certain expenses, such as authority work done by a commercial vendor or report writing software, could not be borne by all nine libraries separately. It provides the opportunity to take advantage of new technologies such as Internet and electronic resources at greatly lowered costs.
Operational committees provide opportunities for staff to participate and grow in their work.
During those years, the high costs of automation prohibited most small libraries from undertaking such a project independently. Having participated in resource sharing since the FLC's inception in 1975, the Fenway libraries believed that sharing online access to their collections would be a logical next step. With the generous assistance of federal grants awarded by the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners, the FLO libraries constructed and equipped a central computer facility at Wentworth Institute of Technology in the fall of 1988 and, in the winter of 1989, combined their OCLC and RLIN bibliographic records into a combined database representing approximately 500,000 volumes. By September of 1989, using software from Data Research Associates, the Fenway Libraries Online system was fully operational in all of the member libraries. The creation of Fenway Libraries Online was made possible through the cooperation and hard work of many - consultants, institutional administrators, library directors, library staff and the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners.