Libraries today are faced with the challenges and pressures of incorporating open content into their collections. The management of these open resources can be daunting, but the benefit to library users is immense.
Access to information is a human right that empowers people and develops the communities in which they live. Open Access (OA) offers access to information critical to researchers, teachers, students and the public at large. As leading facilitators of access to information, Sabinet provides libraries with access to almost 200 OA scholarly journal titles and more than 300 subscription titles via its online platform Sabinet African Journals.
The ever-growing service saw over 30,000 OA medical journal articles downloaded in the last month alone. Interestingly, more than 50% of the site’s traffic originates from outside South Africa.
COLLABORATION AND RESOURCE SHARING
Sabinet is committed to supporting collaboration and resource sharing amongst libraries and has been a partner of OCLC, the world’s largest library co-operative for over 20 years – actively engaging in a shared mission to help libraries meet the ever-evolving needs of their users, institutions and communities.
Sabinet’s Managing Director, Rosalind Hattingh, comments, “Strategic partnerships are significant to us as we continually look for ground-breaking solutions that enable our clients to operate optimally, maximising efficiencies while minimising costs.”
INTEREST IN OPEN CONTENT CONTINUES TO GROW
With library members in more than 100 countries, OCLC utilises the power of this immense library cooperative to support open access initiatives at scale – not only bringing visibility to open content for publishers and content providers, but also helping to prioritise open collections for optimal discovery and access by libraries and their users. Their 2019 Open Content Study revealed that globally 91% of libraries are engaged in open content activities, and 72% plan to get involved in even more. The WorldShare platform offers integrated workflows for collection management and resource sharing combined with superior discovery and fulfilment experiences, ensuring libraries gain more efficient ways to manage open content resources, while balancing budgets and priorities.
Through WorldCat Discovery, users can limit search results to a subset known for providing open content. Additionally, users will benefit from an integration with Unpaywall, a service that maintains a database of links to full-text articles from Open Access sources all over the world. This gets users to the best location for the OA content they find online. More information can be found at http://oc.lc/oa.
Furthermore, Tipasa, the world’s first cloud-based interlibrary loan management system, allows libraries to manage a high volume of interlibrary loan requests for all types of materials including those which may be available as OA – thereby advancing the mission of libraries to share knowledge.
There is a growing need for collaboration amongst libraries to meet the needs of their users. Resource sharing strategies need to be redefined to enable cost savings and expand the resources available.