A statewide delivery service is a high priority for many of our members – especially those participating in Connect NY and the IDS Project. The NY3Rs has listened to our members and has made solving of this issue its highest priority for the newly enhanced cooperative agreement among the NY3Rs. The Delivery Task Force (see below) has hired a consultant to work with representatives of NY3Rs, IDS, ConnectNY and the State Library to ensure that a replacement for LAND is in place and operating by July 1, 2012.
NY3Rs, which incorporated as NY3Rs, Inc. several years ago already has two major ongoing statewide projects -- Ask Us 24/7 and NYHeritage.org.
The nine NY3Rs have created four task groups to investigate issues our members deemed important. They are, and a brief synopsis of developments to date:
- Continuing Education – looking into webinars that will be open to any member of any NY3Rs; sharing funding to bring in nationally recognized experts. Testing various webinar platforms.
- E-resources – agreement with Lyrasis to allow NY3Rs members to get discounted pricing on e-resources without joining Lyrasis; Lexis-Nexis pricing for NY3Rs members; will be investigating shared e-book collections, especially for academic libraries.
- Procurement – investigating procurement issues in NYS for public entities, especially SUNY and CUNY libraries; determining extent of problems and determining if actions can be taken to ease the path for purchases if necessary.
- Statewide delivery – working with State Library on a replacement for LAND delivery service; separately, investigating options for replacement of LAND that would meet needs of current users; future investigation may include libraries and systems beyond current LAND members.
Work continues on Ask Us 24/7 as well as NYHeritage. As an example, NYHeritage is working on a backup system for TIF (archival) images and is also working with consultants to provide educational materials and guidelines on best practices for preserving the TIF images and metadata at the institutional level.
Libraries are encouraged to contact their Council if they have additional “projects” or “issues” that might benefit from NY3Rs investigation and/or coordination.
Reprinted with permission
RRLC Linking Libraries, September 2011
Volume 31, No. 4
