Invisible Yet Necessary

What you need not flying off the shelf? Try the library’s catalogs

OSU’s Valley Library has many ways to get the books you need

By Riad Lemhachheche

The OSU Valley Library owns about 1.9 million monographic volumes (books, videos, maps and government documents). Yet, OSU patrons may not find all the items they need for their research or classes in the shelves of the Valley Library.

Indeed, while the OSU collection is substantial, it is nowhere near the Library of Congress with its 130 million items spread over 530 miles of bookshelves. Additionally, OCLC WorldCat, a worldwide library cooperative, reached one billion holdings this August.

The Valley clearly pales in comparison with it’s 1.9 mil. But, as the saying goes, it’s not the size that matters, it’s how you use it.

So, what are the options left to OSU patrons if items they’re looking for isn’t on the shelves here in fair Corvallis?

In the case of articles, the library subscribes to several online publications accessible through the online catalog.

Another resource is the Summit Alliance Web catalog. Summit is the catalog of all the holdings of the 33 partnering academic libraries in the Pacific Northwest and was created by the merger of Orbis, the Oregon Academic Library Association, and Cascade, its Washington Counterpart. The catalog contains more than 20 million items of which 8 million are unique titles.

Any search done on the OSU catalog, OASIS, can be repeated on the Summit catalog and OSU patrons can borrow items available from any of the Summit Alliance member institutions.

Turnaround time is around three to five days for Summit borrowing.

“The interesting thing is that of this database, 65 percent of the books in the database are owned by only one of the Alliance members. That heterogeneity really increases the value of belonging to the Alliance,” said John Pollitz, the associate university librarian for public services and innovative technology.

Other benefits to the OSU community come from OSU belonging to Summit.

“If you live in Salem or Portland, you can pick up items at another member university,” said Sara Thompson, the library employee in charge of Summit.

Extended campus students living more than 30 miles from campus may even be eligible to receive items at home.

While Summit can prove to be a good resource to look for books, patrons looking for scientific articles and more specialized books may need to go to the next level and place a request for an interlibrary loan (ILL). The request will then be processed by the library ILL office. Using the WorldCat database system that connect libraries from around the world, library staff search for other libraries holding the item based on location and cost and sends electronic requests on behalf of patrons. Using ILL, it can take from three days to one month or more to receive the item. Books come from around the state, but may originate from South Africa, the United Kingdom or even China

ILL can be used by all the library patrons indifferently of class status or major, free of charge. But not all requests may be accepted.

“It is primarily a curriculum resource. Interlibrary loan should fulfill your curriculum,” said Susan Wood who works with ILL.

So while Summit requests are not mediated by library staff, interlibrary loans may be cancelled if they don’t have an academic goal.

“We usually don’t cancel interlibrary loan requests,” Wood said. But unless a student is doing a research on “Harry Potter” or other popular books, the request for the latest volume may not get through. The Library will then redirect patrons toward the Corvallis Public Library and that interlibrary loan service if necessary.

Ordering items from other libraries can reserve some surprises though.

“Once, we received a CPR dummy in a big box with a video and a book,” said Thompson.

Some other surprises included patrons receiving 16 mm film when they expected to receive a movie on DVD.

NOTE: this is a reprint of a story published in the OSU Daily Barometer. The original is What you need not flying off the shelf? Try the library’s catalogs