Vision
The Washington Research Library Consortium will be a catalyst creating synergies among the partner universities to enable the success of learning and scholarship.
Mission
The Washington Research Library Consortium is a collaborative partnership providing proactive and responsive, innovative, cost-effective access to shared information resources, services and expertise.
Strategic Priorities
- Creating coordinated collections
- Creating a robust infrastructure for discovery and access
- Ensuring the long-term preservation of physical and digital information resources
- Sharing expertise
WRLC Initiatives for FY 2021
1. Creating Coordinated Collections
- Develop a model to identify and assign commitments to retain monographs published since 2005.
- Amend the MOU on Shared Collection Print Monograph Retention to reflect any changes to our retention commitment.
- Explore options and negotiate agreements, if possible, for digital textbooks that support student learning.
2. Creating Robust Discovery and Access
- Investigate and pilot a custom request form to replace the various ILL, resource sharing, digitization and hold request links in Primo; the custom form would check availability and place requests using Alma and ILLiad APIs.
- Investigate Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) as a means of improving accessibility to our shared print collections, explore implementation options and legal issues and make a recommendation on how CDL could be implemented in the WRLC.
- Implement the new data architecture for the Shared Collections Facility. Following deployment, consider any refinements to improve discovery and accessibility.
- Implement the Digitization Fulfillment Analysis Team's recommendation to use ILL management systems for requesting, processing and lending chapter, article and other non-returnable digitized material.
3. Preserving Physical and Digital Resources
- With the current version of Islandora reaching end-of-life, explore options that will effectively manage and discover our digital assets and make a recommendation for implementation.
- Select single copies of print journals for retention and make retention commitments, if appropriate, to the WRLC, Scholars Trust and the Rosemont Shared Print Alliance.
4. Sharing Expertise
- Collect information on staff skills and expertise in the consortium. Create mechanisms for sharing that expertise among the consortium partners.
- Advocate for Open Educational Resources (OER) and other low/no cost options by promoting their use through our membership in the Open Education Network, faculty workshops, marketing, LibGuides and a community of practice.
- Review our existing agreement with Ex Libris for Alma and Primo and incorporate any desired changes into our negotiations to extend our subscription agreement with Ex Libris.