Published: Oct. 1, 2024

AnitaLauren Seney, Associate Director of the William A. Wise Law Library and Head of Resource Access and Discovery, and Rebecca Ciota, Technology and Web Services Librarian, traveled to London, UK, at the end of September to present on sharing a library services platform (LSP) with the University Libraries at the World Open Library Foundation Conference (WOLFCon). They were joined by D. Marin Dell from Barry University School of Law, whose library also shares an LSP with their university’s main library. 

In the summer of 2023, the William A. Wise Law Library and the University of Colorado Boulder’s University Libraries launched their new LSP and catalogs to modernize services for their communities. The 2023-24 academic year marked the first year these libraries operated within the same systems, requiring collaboration and compromise. 

In their presentation, Seney and Ciota discussed the benefits and challenges of sharing an LSP and associated public-facing catalogs. 

“One of the main benefits of sharing an LSP and catalog as the smaller library is that the University Libraries does most of the heavy lifting,” said Ciota. “With a staff about one-tenth the size of the University Libraries’, we appreciate that they handle much of the system administration, allowing us to focus on other mission-critical tasks.” 

Ciota detailed an additional benefit being that Law School patrons have been able to more easily access the University Libraries’ catalog and have their titles delivered to the law school. Ciota and their co-presenters then went on to address challenges the Wise Law Library face as the smaller library sharing an LSP and catalog with a larger library—and how to resolve those challenges. 

One such issue was concern over the Wise Law Library’s materials being unfindable.  

“We were concerned that our quarter of a million records would be overshadowed by the University Libraries’ 8.5 million, making it difficult for Law students, faculty, and staff to find our materials,” Ciota explained. “Fortunately, by working with the main campus and our vendor, we implemented a pre-filtered search that retrieves only Law Library materials. We’re really pleased with this feature.” 

Given the difference in catalog size and staffing between the two libraries, it has been essential that Wise Law and University Libraries continue to collaborate and compromise. The libraries have established a shared internal communication structure that includes all stakeholders, and regularly meet with their staff to ensure the process continues to go smoothly.  

In addition to their presentation, Ciota was able to attend multiple sessions, including but not exclusive to “Folio Reporting: Using Multiple Methods to Meet Reporting Needs” and “Beyond FOLIO – Leveraging LDP/MetaDB to Its Fullest” both about data reporting for libraries, while at WOLFcon. 

“I was actually quite pleased with this conference,” said Ciota upon their return. “I work in a niche area of librarianship – library systems and technology – which isn’t really catered to by most library professional conferences. So, I was pleasantly surprised to have a preconference and multiple sessions per day at the conference which were directly applicable to what I do on a day-to-day basis.” 

Since its inception in 2016, WOLFcon has brought together members of the Open Library Foundation’s project member communities, as well as users of their products. The Open Library Foundation was created in 2016 as an unbiased, independent not-for-profit organization to ensure the accessibility and sustainability of open source and open access projects for libraries.