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Abstract
Chapter 4 of Library Technology Reports (vol. 49, no. 1) "Resource Sharing in Libraries: Concepts, Products, Technologies, and Trends" presents a case study in which the Orbis Cascade Alliance progressed through a series of configurations of automation implementations to achieve shared strategic goals of its members to effectively share collections and other resources.
Note: This case study was adapted and expanded from an earlier article.1
The Orbis Cascade Alliance, a consortium of thirtyseven academic libraries in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, is implementing a strategy to share a single automation system instead of the current arrangement of individual systems supplemented by resource-sharing infrastructure. Alma and Primo from Ex Libris were recently selected as the preferred products for the technology environment to be shared among the members.
The Orbis Cascade Alliance represents thirty-seven academic libraries across three states with an aggregated student FTE of 258,000.2 The current Orbis Cascade Alliance was formed in 2003 through the merger of the previously separate Orbis and Cascade consortia of academic libraries, which were both established in the 1990s. These libraries hold an aggregate collection of 9 million titles and 28 million items.
The members of the Orbis Cascade Alliance have long held a strategic emphasis on resource sharing. The original basis for the automation of Orbis and the Cascade consortium involved a separate Millennium ILS in each library with an INN-Reach system to provide a union catalog and enable consortial borrowing. In 1993, the Orbis consortium was one of the early adopters of Innovative's INN-Reach union catalog and interlibrary loan system, second only to OhioLINK, Innovative's development partner for the product. When Orbis and Cascade merged to form the Orbis...