Rural public libraries in multitype library cooperatives - Rural Libraries and Information Services

CONTRIBUTION OF RURAL LIBRARIES

Rural and small libraries are often undervalued in cooperative networks. While the resources that they have do not number the total volumes that are available in larger institutions, the small library may have the one book or the one video that will satisfy the user's demands. The contribution in resources as well as human networking is as William B. Ernst, Jr. stated in 1977: "reciprocal and mutual." The rural library often delivers and supports the network faster than in larger more complex library institutions. The library is not burdened with complex organizational structure and is able to move resources faster. At the same time, rural libraries support customer service as its most important feature. They are often just as concerned about patrons of other libraries as about their own and thus have a dedication to getting the information quickly in order to satisfy user demand.

While the rural library has much to gain from participation in a network, it also has a lot to offer participants. The author has described the patron-initiated interlibrary loan that is being utilized in the Lincoln Trail Libraries System (Ison, 1994). Recently, the System, a primarily geographically rural cooperative headquartered in Champaign, Illinois, added the feature of patron-initiated holds on the public catalogs in the shared automation service program that includes rural libraries from communities of under 5,000 and 10,000 citizens along with population areas of over 50,000. The system manages the shared database of over 1.3 million items for twenty-two libraries. It includes the partial holdings of over eighty different agencies. Through patron-initiated holds, citizens from all participating libraries are able to request materials from other libraries via the shared automation system. The opportunity to do this has been described as virtual borrowing, which is borrowing of materials from a remote library where the transactions are initiated directly by the library patron without mediation from library staff. The materials are then delivered to the patron's home library for pick up by the patron.

A somewhat surprising outgrowth of patron-initiated interlibrary loan is the shifting of the lending away from the larger libraries to a reliance on smaller, more rural, libraries. According to statistics, rural libraries were better able to rely on each other and, in several instances, smaller libraries loaned more than they borrowed from the largest libraries in the consortium. In the same four months that the study was conducted, in every instance, libraries serving a population of 20,000 or fewer increased their percentage of lending to other libraries within the consortium. In every instance, libraries serving a population of over 20,000 decreased their percentage of lending to other libraries and increased borrowing from smaller libraries. Overall, borrowing and lending was up dramatically from the same four months of prior periods with a fivefold increase in activity. This supports a theory that Melvin R. George introduced in 1977 that, with technology, access libraries in a region, similar in size and function, can support a large percentage of interlibrary loan. George predicted that there would be a shift from relying only on the largest of libraries to a more even distribution among different sizes of libraries.