Developing a Shared Index: Challenges and Lessons Learned

Abstract

Underwritten by a Mellon Foundation grant, Princeton University, along with our partners Columbia University and New York Public Library, developed a middleware application for our shared remote storage facility (ReCAP). This application (SCSB), built in collaboration with HTC Global, enables all partners’ materials to function as a single collection available to all partners. When Princeton University Library went live in August 2017, users had immediate access to nearly 6 million items contributed by Columbia and NYPL to ReCAP through our discovery platform (Blacklight).
We will discuss the policy-related questions and technical issues that needed to be addressed to make this project a success, and the ongoing challenges with maintaining the application.
Specific points include:

The configuration of the Voyager ILS needed to interface with SCSB.
The additional functionality needed in Blacklight to enable users to easily request these items.
The impact of multiple copies of the same book held by different institutions appearing in Discovery
APIs created by Princeton and HTC for exchange of data between Voyager, Blacklight, Aeon, and SCSB
Integration scripts to synchronize changes between the various systems

In addition, we will discuss the impact SCSB has had on our collection usage and the opportunity it gave us to rethink the kinds of collection analysis we perform. To make any shared collection work, there are compromises that are made. We hope to present the successes and challenges of this project to frame the issues of any future shared index projects we, or other institutions, will undertake.