NY 3Rs Role in Academic Library Services

This document provides a chronology of the role that the Reference and Research Library Resources Councils have played in both advocating for and providing direct services to academic libraries in New York State.  Staff from the 3R Councils write and visit legislators several times a year to explain what academic and special libraries do for our communities and the state.  Our intention is to have legislators understand the importance of all types of libraries and how they work together for the overall benefit of the regional and statewide community.

• 1967 – 1980s.   The 3R councils were established in the late 1960s to facilitate resource sharing among academic libraries in each region and throughout the state.  Union list of serials were created in each region to expedite  borrowing of journal articles. Regional delivery mechanisms were established.  Through this effort, not only were academic libraries able to borrow resources from each other, but community members, including businesses, were able to borrow research resources from academic libraries through a mutual and collaborative sharing process facilitated by the 3R Councils.

• 1970s.  The 3R councils embraced the OCLC interlibrary loan service as a mechanism for interlibrary loan placement,  including using OCLC's online union listing service to create a regional and then a statewide union list of serials.

• 1970s to present.  Thousands of continuing education opportunities have been provided for staff from academic libraries through the nine Councils.

• 1980s – 1990s.   3R councils provided substantial retrospective conversion monetary grants to academic libraries through the regional automation program to fund the creation of MARC records -- a critical step in academic libraries migrating to an automated integrated library system.
  

• 1980s to present.    The 3R Council's Medical Information Services Program (MISP) subsidizes the lending fees of borrowing medical and health information by academic libraries from other libraries in the state and throughout the country, including libraries in the National Network of Libraries of Medicine.1980s to present.  The 3R councils successfully lobbied for the creation of the state-funded Coordinated Collection Development Aid Program (CCDA) that has assisted academic libraries in building their collections that could be shared with library users throughout the state through statewide interlibrary loan.  This has resulted in an investment from New York State through the 3R councils of at least $40 million for collection development over a 25 year period.  In 2005/06, the 3R Councils, as members of the New York Library Association Legislative Committee, recommended a 100% increase in CCDA funding for academic libraries which became part of the NYLA Legislative platform.

• 1980s to present. Through their Hospital Library Services Program, many of the Councils have circuit rider services programs that help small hospital libraries; provide subsidies for expensive online medical resources; support medical ILL systems like DOCLINE, and provide CCDA funding for hospitals.

• 1990s.   The 3R Councils played an organizing role in creating the New York Consortia on Consortium (NY C of C) - an informal body of primarily academic libraries that convened periodically to determine how best to obtain group discounts for databases.

• 1997 to present.  The 3R councils were instrumental in providing opportunities for academic libraries throughout the entire state to license electronic resources with volume discounts through its partnering role with WALDO.  Many of the councils continue to use regional automation funds to partially subsidize electronic resources for academic libraries.

• During the last 10 years, the 3R Councils have provided more than $1.4 million in direct technology-related grants to academic libraries in the state.

• 2001 to present.    The 3R Councils have provided academic libraries with the platform to provide web access to digitized historical items in their collections through each of the Council's digitizing programs.

• 2003 to present.  The 3R Councils have organized, administered and subsidized more than 30 academic libraries to participate in Ask Us 24/7, the virtual reference service collaboration.

Updated November 16, 2009