Committees
Committees will be assigned the task of carrying out the activities of the Initiative. The Chair of each committee will serve as a liaison to the Steering Committee. Initially there will be the following four work groups; others may be established as the work of the initiative progresses and a need for a new group is recognized.
User Needs Committee
Co-Chairs: Beth Posner
Will research user behavior for the purpose of defining user needs in the areas of information access and resource sharing.
Tasks:
- Examine and synthesize existing user needs studies
- Evaluate usability and statistical data produced by pilot project
STARS Rethinking Resource Sharing Policies Committee (ALA).
Chair: Gina Persichini
Will develop a policy framework for an expanded resource sharing ideal that addresses services offered and how those services are offered to users.
Tasks:
- Integrate Rethinking Resource Sharing principles into the revision of the Interlibrary Loan Code for the United States.
- Manifesto for Rethinking Resource Sharing
- Liaison with International resource sharing groups
- Communicate regarding other national codes
Interoperability Committee
Chair: Gail Wanner
The Interoperability Committee analyzes discovery to delivery technology frameworks inside libraries and outside on the open Web to identify best of breed solutions to improve resource sharing. This committee does not develop solutions, but rather defines and encourages development in the greater web community.
Tasks:
- Identify technical challenges in resource sharing
- Identify communities who are interested in building solutions
- Outreach to these communities (include systems vendors) to understand interoperability issues
- Promote fledgling solutions to libraries to gather feedback and make the solutions more effective
Delivery Committee
Chair: Russell Palmer
The Delivery Committee will collect, analyze and consolidate information about the resource sharing delivery needs of academic, public, school and special libraries and formulate recommendations for best practices based upon their findings.
Tasks:
- Suggest to the library community a branding for home delivery in order to provide a single, consistent message and context.
- Identify and analyze current home delivery projects (approach, cost, sustainability and replicability).
- Collectively envision new and better ways to share scan-on-demand projects and results among libraries.
- Investigate and document alternative solutions for libraries which do not have digitization programs in place.
- Investigate print-on-demand solutions and evaluate their effectiveness in resource sharing.
- Facilitate in whatever way possible national and international efforts to obtain favorable delivery contracts with service providers such as USPS, UPS or FedEx.
- Interface with other groups such as Moving Mountains and the ALA ASCLA ICAN Physical Delivery Discussion Group to examine existing courier services in order to identify ways the committee can facilitate their creation, interoperability and success.
- Formulate recommendations concerning the aforementioned tasks.