Glad to be here, etc..

1. Appointing the OBC:
   1. Orbis Council appointed OBC in May, 96 Committee appointed: The Orbis Council (directors of each Orbis member library) appointed the Orbis Borrowing Committee in late May, 1996, with a charge to recommend Orbis borrowing and lending implementation procedures and policies.
   2. There was one rep per institution.
   3. Many of the reps were previously the institution reps on the Orbis Reciprocal Lending Committee, and so knew a bit about each other and each others institutions.
   4. Charge: recommend Orbis borrowing and lending implementation procedures and policies, with a target implementation date in 1997.

2. Now I'll talk in greater detail about the process the Committee used:
   1. 1st meeting In mid-July we met to get a brief overview of Orbis circulation system, and to ask ourselves a lot of "what happens when......." questions.

   2. Read documentation: Read any documentation we could get our hands on: some older III documentation, and some OhioLINK.

   3. Familiarize ourselves with each institution's current practices: Began getting to know each other's policies: asked ourselves questions about current Itypes, Patron types, loan periods to own community, etc.
      • Local Loan Periods and fines...
      • Local System Patron Block Tables

   4. Visit to Ohio: in mid September (10th - 12th) John Helmer, Nancy Nathanson, Jim Kopp, and I visited OhioLINK, Ohio State University, and the Ohio State Library. Viewed their procedures, asked questions, and got some handouts. Learned that there are substantial differences between OhioLINK and Orbis.(centrally funded, many more institutions so greater chance of duplicate title at a closer library, OhioLINK has several large universities, OhioLINK's circulation policies seemed to be less consensus-built than OhioLINK built, they don't restrict access to OhioLINK to fac/staff/students: everybody in the state can borrow, since it's state funded, OhioLINK paid for some of the libraries' to retrocon, and bought some libraries self-service checkout machines to offset staffing costs of implementing OhioLINK, etc. ).

   5. Define issues: Began defining the issues we need to address: created a
      Master ToDo List

      Divided it into Like-items, "Item Things" "Patron Things", etc., then into Priority ratings: (show priority ratings on Master ToDo List)

   6. Make Recommendations to Council: Procedure for coming up with proposals for Council:

      The Orbis Consortium had some challenging questions to work through as we resolved issues. We have a very large and sometimes unfriendly geographic area to work with, we have a mix of public and private insitutions (which means a variety of rules and guidelines under which each institution must work, and it also means that our missions may be different), we have one large institution and the rest are smaller, we are self-funding (which means that we each are trying to get the best value for our dollars for our own communities), and we have a 75% rate of unique titles so there's very little duplication. These differences between our consortium and others made our decision-making and consensus building process a little more complex.

      To ensure that each institution's needs and votes were equally weighted, and to build trust among the institutions, we created a process for consensus building that was fairly involved and lengthy.

      Here is a list of some of the issues we discussed.

      And here's how we came to a resolution of one issue:

      1. Chair of committee formulates query for Committee:

         Example: Replacement Charges Initial Query

      2. Each committee member discusses issue within each institution, providing to their own Administration the background unique to their situation, and then submits their institutions vote:
         Replacement Charges: same for all Institutions?

      3. Based on institution votes, Chair of Committee writes a proposal:

      4. Many proposals discussed in person at one of two Orbis meeting: clarification of meaning, editing of wording, etc. After we got rolling and began to work with this virtual meeting, we didn't need to discuss all proposals in person: could do them online.

      5. Each institution rep discusses proposal within institution, and submits to the Committee the level of their support for the recommendation, with any additional written comments/explanation, etc., that were necessary. They also inform their director of the discussion and their own institution's feelings about the proposal, so that the Director is aware of the issues and can make an informed vote at the Council meeting.

   7. Council discusses and votes: Council is given the proposal and background information, and they vote. The finalized recommendation is maintained by Orbis staff and a copy placed in the web site for committee use.

      The Council played an important role in the implementation phase. They thoroughly reviewed each recommendation and gave the Committee direction. Since many of the later recommendations built on previous ones, their direction kept us on course so we didn't have to back-track and redo our work. We were very fortunate to have the Council's rapt attention to and feed back regarding our process; it allowed us to make swift progress and cover a large number of items.

      Now we've gone through one issue. You can see that it was a fairly thorough procedure, which worked very well via electronic communications, but the in-person meeting was needed at the end of the process for clarification and discussion.

   Personal observations:

   Now that the implementation phase is over, I'd like to comment on our process.

   • As Chair of the Committee, would I structure the process the same way? I think I would.

   • I think it was important for us to get a feeling of the issues and local procedures that each institution uses; it gave us a sense of the corporate culture of the different institutions, and let us understand the stances that some of us took when discussing proposals.

   • I think the formal and structured method of discussing recommendations let each institution have equal say.

   • I think that the web site which we created also leveled the playing ground: everybody had a chance to see what everybody else thought, how they voted, and what their concerns were. It brought out the needs and agendas of each institution.

   • The fact that the Committee was not the final authority was wonderful! If a certain recommendation did not have full support of every institution, we could kick it up to the Council. The web site allowed the background information about each institution's needs to be reviewed by all the Council members.

   • It was interesting to see some of the same fears shared by the institutions: the smaller institutions had concerns that their smaller collections may be wiped out by the larger institutions, due the greater number of students and faculty who can make requests. The larger institution has concerns that their larger collection will be wiped out due to its size and the fact that Orbis has 75% unique titles. Knowing some of the underlying fears helped us understand that each of us has concerns about this new service.

   • Because of the large distances among us, it takes a great deal of effort and money to meet in person. We wanted to do as much work via e-mail as possible, but we didn't want to lose the value of in-person meetings. I was particularly impressed with how well the virtual meetings went; how much information was gathered and shared, and how much of the preliminary work could be done electronically. In order for this kind of virtual meeting to work, it takes committment on the part of each institution to read the memos, talk with other library staff, and respond electronically in a timely manner. There were days when I think we didn't do anything other than send and reply to email; flurries and snowstorms' worth of e-mail. There were a few times when we needed to call each other and ask for a reply, but that didn't happen often.

   • Future meetings: I think while the current committee members may know and trust each other well enough to skimp on some of the process when making future recommendations, the ramifications that circulation policies have are complicated enough that we probably should stick to a formal procedure. This is primarily so that each institution has a format for gathering information from staff within their own libraries; it's important to get input about these procedures from the folks who actually do the work, from the library's administration, and from other units in the library that may be affected by the procedure or policy.