Making Technology Work for a Diverse Group of Libraries

The Southeastern Wisconsin Information Technology Exchange, Inc., or SWITCH, was launched twenty years ago. Five years later the consortium launched Innovative’s INNOPAC as their first integrated library tool. Today, SWITCH runs the Millennium integrated library technology platform and has grown to eight members. Over the years, library staff have also partnered with Innovative to create features that reliably support member libraries of different types and sizes with diverse print and e-collections.

“Although we have a disparate membership that develop their collections their own way, we’re able to bring it all together. There’s not a lot of cross over between collections and that’s a good thing for sharing physical materials,” says Bill Topritzhofer, Systems Manager.

“It’s important not to be limited by library technology in a consortia environment, because you don’t want to shut out one member because of product limitations. We can keep the account balances discreet with Millennium, and we’ve always been able to do this since day one, even with INNOPAC.”

To meet the needs of a diverse group of libraries, SWITCH was involved in two development partnerships with Innovative. The staff worked on a development partnership to build multiple IP support for Web Access Management, an integrated authentication tool in Millennium. This IP support feature allows consortium members to provide library-specific access to subscription e-content while sharing a single server.

As part of a second partnership in 2007, the staff successfully tested an implementation of Innovative’s WebBridge LR (link resolver) with a new consortium feature. With WebBridge LR, SWITCH users that arrive at the citation level of an article and need full-text will be presented with a list of resources to which they have access at their particular institution. Says Topritzhofer: “This will help our users because otherwise they would not be able to tell if they had access to a resource until they tried to navigate to a resource and discovered they could not be authenticated. Just as when we implemented Web Access Management, this will be a life-saver for us in terms of ease for our staff and an easier authentication process for our users.”

Innovative has always provided great support along with its reliable products. At the same time, the company continues to respond to customer’s changing needs. Says Topritzhofer: “We’re pleased that Innovative has set up a ‘triage area’ at its Help Desk to attend to the needs of consortia around the world.”