Kerry Keegan, Editor
Message from the Chair
Hi, everyone!
My name is Tom Bruno and I am your STARS chair for 2015-2016. I am currently the Associate Director for Resource Sharing and Reserves at the Yale University Library; before that I worked as the Head of Resource Sharing at Widener Library at the Harvard College Library. I have been working off and on in the field of resource sharing for almost twenty years, and was drawn to volunteer as a member of RUSA STARS on account of our section’s strong sense of community. The outward-facing nature of interlibrary loan means that cooperation beyond the walls of one’s own library is a basic requirement- the work done by STARS and our members helps foster that spirit of cooperation by sharing best practices, knowledge, and a sense of mutual obligation and trust. Over the years I have served RUSA STARS as webmaster and chair of the International ILL Committee, and I consider it an honor to continue that service now as section chair.
STARS had an exciting series of programming available at the 2015 ALA Annual Conference in San Francisco. Many thanks to the Research and Assessment Committee and their panel of speakers for their preconference “ILL Datastorm: Practical Assessment,” as well as the ILL Committee and their panel presentation “Acquisitions, Collection Development, Electronic Resources and ILL, Oh My!: Connecting Users to What They Want.” Both offerings were well-attended and well-received! We also saw our ILL and Hot Topics discussion groups use previous attendee feedback to experiment with new formats and topics. Both experiments were a success and we will continue to reinvent these forums to keep them exciting and relevant to our membership. Speaking of Membership, thanks to Micquel Little and the Membership Committee for another successful STARS Social on the Friday night of the Annual Conference. And, of course, my heartfelt thanks to Tina Baich for all of her fantastic work over the past year as STARS chair.
While the final list of STARS programs for Midwinter and Annual 2016 has not yet been confirmed, we are looking forward to supporting another year of great offerings, including the Education and Training Committee’s perennial favorite, ILL 101 workshop (aka “Everything You Always Wanted to Know about ILL”). This will be held at the Boston Public Library during the ALA Midwinter Meeting in, next January. And, of course, since Annual 2016 will be in Orlando, I will be planning the very first ILL librarian flashmob on the Jungle Cruise at Disney World!
In addition to supporting our events at the conferences, we have a lot of ongoing committee projects. Look out for updated bylaws, a new and improved International ILL survey, and ShareILL’s move to a new home. To say that none of this work would be possible without all of your help may seem a cliché, but it really is true. STARS is only as strong as our membership and I’m happy to say that, based upon the activities of the past year and those we have planned for the upcoming year, we’re looking very strong, indeed. Thanks again to everyone for your time and energy – let’s make this another great year for STARS!
Tom Bruno
STARS Chair 2015-2016
Codes, Guidelines, and Technical Standards Committee
The Codes, Guidelines, and Technical Standards Committee completed revisions for the first drafts of the Interlibrary Loan Code for the United States, its Explanatory Supplement, and the ALA ILL Request Form in April. The drafts were presented to the STARS Executive Committee in May, where they were unanimously approved. The RUSA Standards and Guidelines Committee discussed the drafts and approved them with comments at ALA Annual. The Codes, Guidelines, and Technical Standards Committee will be discussing RUSA S&G’s feedback over the summer and hopes to share the documents during a public comment phase in late summer or early fall with a goal of promulgating a final version by early 2016.
Brian Miller, Chair
STARS Atlas Systems Mentoring Award Committee
Congratulations to Karen Thomas, who was this year’s award winner. She currently serves as the Access Services Librarian at Krauskopf Library at Delaware Valley College. She was joined by Committee Mentor, Megan Gaffney, at ALA San Francisco.
This year marked a change in the procedure for the RUSA awards ceremony in that a representative from STARS presents all the STARS awards, rather than having a different presenter for each award. Tina Baich served this role.
Bethany B. Sewell, Chair
RUSA STARS Rethinking Resource Sharing Policies Committee
The RUSA STARS Rethinking Resource Sharing Policies Committee has continued to work on Version 2 of the ALA RUSA STARS Rethinking Resource Sharing STAR Checklist. Version 2 has been entered into Tufts University’s Qualtrics site and the scoring mechanism has been tested. We expect to have it available on the Rethinking Resource Sharing Initiative website for libraries to use by September 2015. We spent the rest of our meeting at the ALA Annual Conference to plan promotion and training events.
Sue Kaler, Chair