Memorial Hall Library, Andover ILL Center
NOBLE ILL Center
By Marilyn Graves, NOBLE ILL Center

Summer Update - Bits and Pieces

The ILL Centers staff attended the annual NELINET Resource Sharing Meeting in June at Southern New Hampshire University in Manchester, NH. Steve Wildstrom from BusinessWeek spoke on the "Persistence of Print" in the morning. The talk focused on the state of publishing today, where Google fits in, self publishing and the cost of journals. A link to his handout is available at: www.wildstrom.com/steve/libraries_handout.pdf

We also heard Dana Dietz speak on recent enhancements and future plans for OCLC and resource sharing. OCLC seems to be attempting to reinvent and reposition themselves as a search tool that will match Google, EBAY, and Amazon in locating and providing information to clients/customers. They propose to locate resources with one easy search and deliver them with "smart resolution", meaning providing online content resolution, buy it, and payment options. Their intent leaves a lot of unanswered question about obtaining resources and costs. We'll all be interested to see how their goals are accomplished.

The staff of the NOBLE ILL Center also attended a one day seminar at Salem State College on Copyright offered by the Copyright Clearance Center of Danvers. Dru Zuretti presented an overview of Copyright as it applies to libraries. Public Domain, Fair Use, infringement and ILL were covered with emphasis on newer digital issues associated with online distance learning, and reserves addressed by the TEACH Act.

The NOBLE ILL Center launched at new tool for promotion of ILL that was originally developed by the ILL Center for the SEMLS region located at Quincy Public Library. It is a brochure for Library staff to give to patrons that explains mediated ILL as a regional service offered through the library. The brochure can be customized as it is in a Word document. It can be viewed at: www.noblenet.org/ill/

The rest of the summer should be relatively quiet at the ILL Centers. This is a good time to schedule a meeting for a site visit with the ILL Center that serves your library. You might be especially interested in doing this if you have new staff, need help promoting the service, or just want an update on the service.