Resource Sharing FAQs
National Resource Sharing
What is the new National resource sharing service?
The new National Resource Sharing Service is a collaboration between the National Library, CAVAL and Index Data to tailor a service to Australia’s unique environment.
Trove Partners will be the first in Australia to access this leading-edge technology at a national scale. Based on the platform of Project ReShare, it is a result of open collaboration and has been designed by library professionals in a user experience-centred approach. Development of the platform is led by a steering committee with representatives from libraries, consortia and developers.
Why Change?
Why is the National Library moving to a new resource sharing service?
The National Library provides a national Inter Library Loans / Document delivery (ILL/DD) service to Trove Partners, as part of the Trove Collaborative Services offering. This allows Partners to request and supply ILL/DD using information from the Australian National Bibliographic Database (ANBD).
The new service will replace the underlying infrastructure to provide all the current core functions and a host of new features. This outcome is the result of an extensive engagement and research strategy with Trove Partners and a robust tender process to select an innovative solution.
Tiers
What types of lending services will be offered?
In 2024-25 the focus will be on delivering:
- A reciprocal service that allows peer to peer sharing of resources with no transaction fees. There will be a minimum Australian National Bibliographic Database holdings threshold and those seeking to borrow will also need to be collection lenders.
- A pay-for-peer offering that replaces the current LADD service. It will include the payment gateway, reconciliation, invoicing and payment services. Requesters will pay transaction fees to suppliers to cover the cost of resource sharing activities. There is an additional administrative fee for this tier of membership to cover the cost of the payment reconciliation services.
A Trove Partner will select to be part of one or both offerings, depending on your organisational needs.
What new features will be included?
The new service will completely integrate with the Australian National Bibliographic Database. Other new features include:
- A reciprocal service model with no transaction-based fees, to keep costs down.
- The ability to set preferred Partners, including by region or library sector.
- Automated load balancing, removing the need to create manual lists of suppliers.
- A platform for future innovation and improved functionality.
Groups
How will load balancing work?
Partners will move to using the load balancing model to share effort more equally across the network. It will make requesting resources simpler, all you need to know is what resource you are after and the system will do the rest of the work for you. Load sharing will ensure that all Partners are contributing equally where they are able, so that those high up in the list or those that have the largest collections don't continue to receive requests in an unsustainable way. It will also mean that Partners who opt for the reciprocal ($0 transaction fees) tier have the best opportunity to lend so they can receive within this model.
Can I set up groups of preferred partners to reflect resource sharing groups we are a part of?
We are looking to build Affinity group functionality and will be taking advice from the Trove Collaborative Services Resource Sharing Working Group and Australian Library and Information Association Inter-Library Loan committee to ensure we get the full set of sharing groups required.
Functionality
Will we be able to see if holdings are on loan?
Holdings on loan won't be visible through the resource sharing platform. However, contributing Partners will be able to see that a resource sharing request is still active and that the holding is on loan in their Library Management System.
Will physical loans still be supported?
Yes, physical loans are still supported. The lending of physical resources is still a crucial part of resource sharing in the national network, especially for certain library sectors like public libraries.
How will copyright be managed?
The new Resource Sharing platform is a resource for the unique Australian environment. Copyright will continue to be managed in the same way it is managed now. If you are making a request under an Australian copyright exemption you will be able to select this exemption as part of your request. We will be able to update the system as changes to copyright law occur.
Transition
When will the transition to the new services begin and how will training be provided?
In late 2024, the process to transition existing resource sharing Trove Partners will begin and training in the new service is planned to run in the first half of 2025.
A range of training materials and resources will be developed and provided directly to Partners before making accessible through the Partner Learnhub. We plan to run refresh training prior to release and follow-up training after implementation.