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College and Research Libraries
July 2004, Vol. 65, No. 4

Book Review

Cooperative Efforts of Libraries. Ed. William Miller and Rita M. Pellen. New York: Haworth, 2002. 273p. cloth $59.95 (ISBN 0789021870); paper $34.95 (ISBN 0789021889). LC 2002-156756.

The virtue of cooperation among libraries is so ingrained into the profession as to have become a virtual cliché. Most academic librarians have worked in a consortial environment at least once at some time during their professional lives. But at least one such academic librarian, this reviewer, can still manage a relatively parochial underappreciation of the breadth, depth, and creativity of the cooperative enterprise among libraries. This collection of seventeen essays by thirty-one authors, also published as vol. 16, nos. 1–2, of Resource Sharing & Information Networks (2002), offers a comprehensive makeup course in library cooperation.

Part I, "Regional and State-Wide Cooperation," passes over the more familiar territory of OCLC and regional networks (e.g., SOLINET) to examine statewide activity in larger states, regional efforts among smaller states, and collaborations within large metropolitan areas. Reporting on statewide programs includes Virginia’s VIVA-based adaptation of vendor-supplied catalog records for full-text poetry databases, complete with sample records and examples of most common errors found. Readers also will discover the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities System’s response to legislatively mandated cooperative collection development. In today’s reality of overlapping consortia, many librarians will find Carolyn Sheehy and Bernie Sloan’s description of Illinois’s long (late 1960s) history of academic library cooperation and the state’s 2002 initiative to unite several related collaborations under a unifying council both instructive and helpful.

Linkages with narrower topical, if not geographic, focus will appeal to more particular interests. Dottie Hiebing and Timothy Johnson share the birthing pains associated with New York City’s multitype METRO consortium’s work with OCLC’s virtual reference software. Their chronological account points to the effects of differing levels of institutional interest, but also to valuable and organizationally healthy responses. As reported by Susan Curzon, the California State University developed a systemwide collaboration to encourage the development of shareable approaches to enhancing "information competence." Though created to advance the state’s commitment to information literacy, this model has important, generalizable applications in systems relying more on voluntary participation by individual institutions as opposed to mandated cooperation (e.g., Minnesota’s collection development project).

The articles of Part I provide an effective overview of collaborations old and new, narrowly focused and more generally supportive of broader missions. However, they are somewhat limited by their descriptive, "how-we-did-it-good" motif. Most authors were project participants; some were project directors. All are advocates. Although several forthrightly identify obstacles encountered, virtually all are solved and overall outcomes universally praised. And like much of library literature, these conclusions are proffered without supporting assessment such as cost-benefit analysis. Do libraries never try collaborative projects that fail? Projects that we thought would provide better collections or improved services, but ultimately proved too costly to justify the investment? This reader, for one, would like to have also visited cooperative efforts that just didn’t make it, proved too expensive, or had outlived their useful life. Objective analyses of the not so successful would provide productive opportunities for learning.

Part II, "Variety of Cooperative Ventures," takes a somewhat more forward-looking approach to collaboration as it samples "of the wide variety of cooperative effort which makes libraries so unusual among institutions, and librarians unusual among professionals." In an article highlighting the Center for Research Libraries’s (CRL’s) role in providing collective storage space for little-used research materials as well as the economies of collective acquisitions, Bernard Reilly looks to advances in network technology to help overcome at least some of the obstacles that have limited collective action in the past. Ultimately, he proposes a cooperative national preservation program modeled on the national energy grid. David Weeks and Ron Chepesiuk examine applications of "Harvard Model," high-density storage facilities serving consortial relationships. The three examples present funding models and operating guidelines followed by an excellent summary of lessons learned.

Although a number of chapters focus on the relationships and concerns of large libraries and their systems (e.g., CRL and statewide storage programs in Ohio and California), collaborative success also is apparent among smaller college collections. Rachel Cheng et al. report on a collaborative digital reference experiment involving five, small (though notably prestigious) liberal arts colleges. Responding to needs expressed in faculty and student surveys, the Wesleyan University Library secured a grant to extend the availability of real-time reference service. Eventual participants also included Wellesley, Vassar, Smith, and Connecticut Colleges. After the first of two years provided by the grant, the authors present some cost data and comparative use statistics on the way to concluding the importance of the extended hours and benefits to users. Although this essay offers considerably more evidence of assessment, analysis of data, and consideration of cost-benefit, nevertheless, conclusions seem to owe more to belief in the efficacy of the project on the level of faith than to hard analysis.

Seiden et al. offer a more cautionary analysis in their description of the Tri-College Consortium’s effort to build the equivalent of one research collection from three undergraduate college libraries. Bryn Mawr, Haverford, and Swathmore have collaborated since the 1940s and since then have discussed how to enhance the composition and accessibility of their collections. A 2001 planning grant from Mellon renewed the impetus. Interestingly, despite the enabling power of technology, growing fiscal prudence, and the librarians’ commitments to collaboration, user data from faculty "suggest taking a conservative approach to weeding and collaborative collection development."

Miller and Pellen, director and associate director of libraries, respectively, at Florida Atlantic University, have pulled together an effective tour of library collaboration past, present, and future. A first resource for librarians interested in everything collaborative from statewide document delivery and catalogs to virtual reference, replacing brittle books, or international cooperation.—James R. Kuhlman, University of North Carolina at Asheville.