Circulation in a Consortium

Introduction Circulation is one area of librarianship where each library can best demonstrate its individual nature as expressed through its policies. Whereas catalog librarians have shared standards and codes, acquisitions librarians have institutional rules and policies applied in standard business practices, and reference librarians must face each question with an established set of reference tools and personal ingenuity, the circulation department primarily serves as the expression of a library's service ethic, the face of the library. Ask the person on the street what they think a librarian does, and the response may be that this is the person who checks out books. Planning for a cooperative venture, therefore, becomes a much more sensitive matter when different libraries join together to provide shared access to their collections while at the same time trying to retain their unique policies. The University of Idaho Library (UI), University of Idaho Law Library (UI-Law), and North Idaho College's Molstead Library (NIC) learned this recently as the libraries joined catalogs in an attempt to enhance service to their patrons. As part of an LSTA demonstration grant, these libraries agreed in principle that the best service to their libraries would be through a shared database. This LSTA funding was meant to promote cooperation between partnering libraries as a pilot project for statewide resource sharing. This grant was given to a consortium that included the three Idaho academic libraries and Washington's Gonzaga University Library, Gonzaga Law Library, and Whitworth College. This group was in the process of migrating to Endeavor's Voyager system, a change that permitted a reconsideration of certain fundamental philosophies. Joint Catalog During Endeavor's training, structural decisions for database organization were determined. The Idaho academic libraries committed at that point to combining their records into a single database. At that time, Voyager lacked features that have since been added that would have facilitated cross-database borrowing (as are now found in Universal Catalog and Universal Borrowing). If those features had existed, the decision to join catalogs might never have been made, and some of the other elements of shared borrowing might not have been scrutinized. But at that training session, we bought into a vision. It was a vision of open access, of less structure, and more sharing. A shared database would clearly show our patrons what resources were available without additional layers of searching. A shared database would, we presumed, put the onus on the libraries to create policies to enable our readers and our books to find one another. The shared database would be a service-driven rather than a staff-driven enterprise. Getting to Know You One of the key elements to the success of any project is the ability to communicate openly and respectfully. While this basic element seems obvious, it is also true that a project that does not begin there is doomed to failure. The three libraries had empowered the circulation unit heads to make decisions that would lead to smooth implementation. This was, indeed, a critical piece, as none of us had yet discovered how different each library and each learning community really was. The process of intermingling our circulation policies without losing individual institutional goals was a study of diplomacy. The individuals closely involved with establishing circulation policy learned much from one another, particularly that college libraries have widely varying populations under the umbrella of "academic libraries". Our commonalities included serving faculty expectations, similar academic calendars, and reserve collections. We were also fortunate to have similar loan periods, making some of the changes less visible. From here, we discovered how our policies diverged. Our students have very different approaches to education. …