This guest post is by Lars Leon, Past-Chair of the Rethinking Resource Sharing Initiative and Resource Sharing Librarian (retired) at the University of Kansas. He can be reached at lleon@ku.edu.
Resource Sharing connects us. It’s a Community of library practitioners, vendors, physical shipping partners, and so many more people. It is vital to helping countless patrons across different library types, size, and location across the United States and beyond access the information they want for education, getting a job, just enjoying a book and/or countless other reasons. The more effective we can share, the more we can share positively impacting even more patrons. In the early 2000s, a small group of librarians, library techies, and vendor colleagues brainstormed on challenges and what was needed to help the community leap into the future which led to the publication of a white paper. The Rethinking Resource Sharing Initiative (RRSI) was born which would lead efforts to dream, think, and act in vendor, system, technology, and group neutral ways.
A Manifesto was drafted that was discussed in a range of venues to help the Resource Sharing Community think individually and as a Community. This led to development of the STAR Checklist which had a major impact. Over 250 libraries utilized the tool to evaluate their operations. Multiple participants reported back on how the Checklist helped them make local changes to practice, technology, policies, obtain greater local support and more leading to improved service and efficiencies. The Checklist was also regularly presented on at major resource sharing conferences in the United States and internationally. These presentations sparked thoughtful discussions amongst attendees. It was popular enough that an updated version was created that led to similar results.
RRSI collaborations and/or hosted discussions were just as important as the Checklist in providing for space and time to think about the important guiding themes presented by the original group and further developed over time in the Community. This helped individuals and the Community in the present as well as consider what was needed for the future.
We all know collaboration is key in resource sharing. RRSI had a variety of collaborations over the first 20 years including with an ALA RUSA STARS committee which was vital for continual conversation especially related to policy.
RRSI tried new ways of conversation such as themed Twitter discussions hosted by Tom Bruno. Wow, those were very thought provoking in allowing multiple participants to throw out ideas and respond to each other in real time. RRSI tried to think of ways to both help the conversation as well as consider new ways of engagement which the Twitter conversations definitely did.
There were a number of other efforts over the first 15 years that you can read about elsewhere on the RRSI website. You’ll see key themes across those efforts including trying to keep us connected as a Community even as many libraries migrated towards more group and vendor specific efforts.
The pandemic ground RRSI activity almost to a halt though as people rightfully focused on taking care of themselves, family, others, and eventually getting services going again.
Perhaps it was fitting that a final effort before RRSI went on hiatus due to the pandemic was our Future of ILL (Walled Gardens?) virtual discussions in 2021 co-led by Tom Bruno and I. Wow. We had incredible levels of participation from resource sharing practitioners, vendor friends, tech friends, and more. The participation even overwhelmed our Google Docs setup to capture real-time comments. The Resource Sharing Community turned out and participants shared fears, hopes, and dreams.
Ideas shared by the participants in those 2021 virtual discussions helped illuminate how lasting the vision was from the original group who created RRSI. In addition, it reinforced how important it was to have had learning and engagement opportunities over the years following the RRSI kick-off. Many participants were eager for Community efforts that were broader than specific technologies, vendors, and groups which support the neutral vision for RRSI.
I’m enjoying retirement but I definitely look forward to the exciting RRSI Reboot underway. We are facing more challenges than ever, but this Community has shown through the decades that through shared learning, dreaming, and action we can continue, and grow the collective work that ultimately helps all of our patrons’ lives. Good luck and look for opportunities to engage with others via RRSI!
Lars Leon
Resource Sharing Librarian (retired)
University of Kansas Libraries
lleon@ku.edu