The Library's membership in a group called the 
Boston
Library Consortium is uncommon in several respects (Brown is the
only member institution outside of Massachusetts, for instance). Now
a consortium project that has just gotten off the ground this semester
promises to redefine the scope of the Library's collection and its
customer base.
Brown has been part of the 14-member consortium for about five years;
the university also belongs to a consortium of Rhode Island academic
libraries. Membership in the Boston group has expedited the inter-library
loan process for patrons of the member libraries, cutting the time
span for courier service by several days.
But members of the Boston Library Consortium, which includes most
of the major academic libraries in Boston outside of Harvard's, wanted
to go a step further. They wanted to allow users of each library in
the consortium to search all of the libraries' catalogs together,
in the fashion of one mega-catalog. About a year ago, then, the consortium
contracted with a vendor called epixtech to build a computerized system
that would simplify online searches of the consortium members' collections,
said Bonnie Good Buzzell, '72, head of the circulation department
at the Rockefeller Library. The service that has been created is being
called the "virtual catalog." It went public on a small scale in February,
but a formal announcement is being delayed until later this spring
when more universitie - including the University of Massachusetts
system - become part of the virtual catalog.
"This is one of the more cutting-edge projects that we're involved
in," Buzzell said. "The result has us asking questions like, `What
is our collection?' and `Who are our customers?'" If a patron attempts
to use the virtual catalog, the system searches the database to determine
the patron's borrower category and to verify that he or she is authorized
to use the service. The patron is then able to conduct searches, read
descriptions of pertinent titles in the consortium members' collections,
and determine any sought-after title's availability.
The system generates e-mail messages to the patron at different stages
of the process to offer information on a book's availability status
and location. "The system interacts in a sophisticated way with both
the lending library and the borrowing library," Buzzell said.
Buzzell believes the virtual-catalog system will generate staff efficiencies.
Library staff will not need to mediate the process for a Brown patron
borrowing a book from another library in the Boston consortium. "This
system is patron-initiated."
In addition, the system significantly expands the number of titles
available to Brown patrons, as they now will have quick access to
the collections of many of the largest public and private libraries
in Massachusetts. Massachusetts officials have put money into the
arrangement and will bring the state's public library system into
the mix as well.
Buzzell admits that no one is really sure how popular the virtual
catalog will be, and whether users will go to it as a first option
for searches. But she said that the history for similar kinds of services
is that "demand goes way up."
The virtual catalog is not the only project under way that could change
the way Brown library patrons utilize services. The library plans
to conduct a pilot project with several professors in the sciences
this semester to test the concept of electronic course reserves.
Electronic reserves could give students immediate access to a variety
of materials that a course professor might want them to review, from
pertinent articles to complex mathematics problems. The idea is also
to allow professors to construct course pages on the Web, complete
with descriptions and syllabi. Library staff could then refer to these
when helping a student, without having to ask the student for a copy
of his or her syllabus.
Buzzell said the main impediment to having a full-fledged system in
place at this point is the complicated area of copyright regulations
for electronic material. The library hopes to have in place a formal
policy governing use of such material by the fall.
