Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium

This is part two of a two-part series on the SCELC library consortium which focuses on current programs and initiatives including financials, licensing, business models, and future directions. Part one, which appeared in the previous JLA consortia column focused on the history, governance, staffing, and the early evolution of services in the organization.

The role of the library keeps changing, particularly with the development of new education models and technologies. User behaviors are changing, too, and libraries need to adapt and use different approaches in providing library services and access to content. Digital tools make online content search easy, but sometimes the value the library brings gets lost, even though it is the library that purchases, sets up, and maintains that online access to content. The most recent Ithaka US Faculty Survey highlights this misunderstanding—a large percentage of scientists feel that “because faculty have easy access to academic content online, the role librarians play at their institution is becoming much less important”. What new value-added benefits and services can libraries consider to help teaching faculty and researchers, or increase the prestige of their school? As higher education explores online and MOOC opportunities, how can libraries provide support? Rick Burke, Executive Director of SCELC, shares challenges he hears from libraries. As the e-resource marketplace has evolved, the need has grown for tools to help libraries promote and manage access to those resources, while providing a means to assert the library's role in making those resources available. He will discuss SCELC's experiences in bringing these tools to the consortial marketplace. Matt Goldner, Product and Technology Advocate of OCLC, will give insights on the changing relationship between library and school community, as well as OCLC's initiatives to help libraries adjust to the new landscapes. Franny Lee, Co-Founder of SIPX, will discuss the research conducted by the Stanford Intellectual Property Exchange on measuring the content access benefits that the library relationship brings to higher education students, as well as SIPX's experiences translating requests and feedback from libraries into opportunities for copyright education and user interface design that makes the library's role visible. Glenn Johnson-Grau, Head of Collection Development at Loyola Marymount University, will discuss the effect of diminishing visibility on academic libraries as users decreasingly associate the "library" with the physical collection and the new opportunities that open when we strengthen campus relationships and reassert our value in the academic mission of our organizations.

Committee co-sponsored this helpful session. Each presentation examined the question of how to analyze print and electronic usage statistics in meaningful ways. Burke and Price presented on the SCELC's