Effective Practices in Academic and Research Librarianship

In the field of Jewish History, eleven major research libraries with strong collections and interests in this area are collaborating to enhance and maintain a Jewish History Web Portal. High quality subject web portals are invaluable resources for those seeking scholarly information. Traditionally, libraries have attempted to meet the needs of their users by offering subject access to major resources in a particular subject area. This often results in duplication of work done by other libraries, as well as issues surrounding the time needed to create and maintain high quality sites. This project adopts a collaborative approach in order to share the workload across several institutions and ensure that the subject guide is an up-to-date guide that scholars will find valuable.

A number of steps were taken to organize this collaboration. The process began by identifying potential partners and building their interest in a multi-institutional project. Building a team of subject experts and agreeing who would be responsible for which sections came next. Since the institutions involved in this project are geographically disparate, guidelines to Section Editors, including overall responsibilities, selection criteria and practical guidelines, and notes for inputting data had to be agreed upon. A three person Editorial Board was selected to ensure overall and balanced quality. Participating libraries have the option to input their electronic and print holdings. Ongoing communication by email has been key in ensuring success of the project.

Creative use of information technology ensured ease of inputting and editing of data, obviating the need for knowledge of html or web editors. This allowed participants to be selected for their ability to contribute intellectually rather than based on technical skills.

• Researchers benefit from the practice by having access to a free high quality electronic guide to resources in Jewish History, kept up to date by librarians who are experts in the field of Jewish History.
• Libraries benefit as creating high quality web portals is one way of ensuring that libraries are seen to be central to the organization of information and of ensuring recognition that libraries have significant human expertise that it is worth investing in.
• The library community benefits by reducing duplication of work across multiple libraries, and allowing each of the participating librarians to work to depth in a subject area rather than to breadth.

Almost all costs are covered within the regular salaries of participating librarians and ongoing information technology costs to the University of Toronto. In addition there were costs of sending the creator of the site (subsequently the Chair of the Editorial Board) to a conference to call for collaboration, and costs to institutions and individual librarians for bringing participants together for a meeting in New York.

The practice - a multi-institutional collaboration on a subject web portal fulfills all aspects of the University of Toronto Library Mission, transcribed below with key elements pertaining to the practice in caps:
The mission of the University of Toronto Library is TO FOSTER THE SEARCH FOR KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING IN THE UNIVERSITY AND THE WIDER COMMUNITY. To this end, WE SHALL PROVIDE INNOVATIVE SERVICES AND COMPREHENSIVE ACCESS TO INFORMATION founded upon our developing resources as one of the leading research libraries in the world.

The success of the collaboration on the site will be measured in two ways: 1) usage of the site - number of hits 2) ongoing and active participation of partners in maintaining and enhancing the website.

Subject web portals have the quality of ice sculptures. They may be brilliant at the moment they are created, but the melt down begins the moment after they are made available and unless they are sustained over time they lose their usefulness very fast. The intent of this collaboration is to ensure the sustainability of the website. By creating a project that has multiple contributors and stakeholders, the Academic Guide to Jewish History has a broad base of skilled and knowledgeable parties capable of ensuring that the objectives of the guide are being fulfilled.

The practice of interlibrary collaborations on web portals in other subject areas could be initiated at the individual librarian level, at the institutional or inter-institutional level.

Universities and other research organizations often need to be convinced of the need to provide substantial financial support for their libraries. Many recognize the need for funding for print and electronic collections, but have little idea of the staffing levels required to make those collections accessible. A high profile subject web portal is one way of ensuring visibility of the expertise required and the work done by library staff. Furthermore, by interlibrary collaboration, subject expertise can be maximized and duplication of effort reduced in the creation of high quality subject web portals. But, most importantly for academic libraries, the needs of researchers are met by building high quality and sustainable subject web portals.