The library relies on resource sharing, interlibrary loan and document delivery as an extension of the collection. Interlibrary loan is a formal agreement among libraries to share materials with, or provide copies to, other libraries. Because of the ever-increasing publication of materials and the impossibility of one library ever owning everything, interlibrary loan is crucial to meet the research needs of our students and faculty. The Mark O. Hatfield Library enhances its borrowing and lending capabilities through membership in the OCLC (Online Computer Library Center) network, an automated system that connects the library to libraries across the United States and libraries in many other countries as well.
The library borrows all sorts of materials through Interlibrary Loan including books, scores, DVDs, etc. We also request journal articles from participating libraries; journal articles are transmitted electronically and users are notified via email when articles are available.
For more information, see the Interlibrary Loan guide.
Oberlin Group
The Oberlin Group is a consortium of liberal arts college libraries from around the country. Its main purpose is to share information among the library directors. The group has initiated a number of important cooperative agreements including reciprocal interlibrary loan and consortial contracts for electronic journals, databases, ebooks, and more.
Orbis Cascade Alliance
The Orbis Cascade Alliance is a consortium of over 35 academic libraries in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. Alliance member libraries work together to provide outstanding services to students and faculty, share information resources and expertise, develop library staff, and help members allocate financial and human resources to serve the unique needs of each member. The Alliance supports a number of services, including Summit, a shared online catalog and system that allows students, faculty and staff to easily search and request library materials owned by member libraries; courier service offering delivery of library materials in Oregon, Washington and Idaho; the Northwest Digital Archives, offering enhanced access to primary sources in the Northwest US; and cooperative purchasing of databases, ebooks and ejournals, and other digital library services.
Summit is an excellent tool for resource sharing and greatly expands the availability of materials to the Willamette Community. The Alliance provides the Willamette Community access to an extensive, research level collection and strongly influences local collection development decisions in many ways.
West
At one time, all members of the Orbis Cascade Alliance were members of WEST: Western Regional Storage Trust. The pricing model was changed and it became too expensive for many of the libraries to remain members of the organization but nonetheless, participants in the Alliance Distributed Print Repository (DPR) are still "archive holders" in WEST. The Alliance DPR JSTOR archive is a WEST Silver Archive, which is grandfathered in as Silver with the understanding that volume-level completeness checking was already done. The Hatfield Library is an archive holder of approximately 30 journal titles.
The Alliance organized a distributed print repository of the paper backfiles of three widely owned electronic journal packages: the American Chemical Society (ACS) journals (33 titles); JSTOR Arts and Sciences I journals (117 titles); and the JSTOR Arts and Sciences II journals (124 titles). These packages were selected because a broad spectrum of the consortium membership owns paper backfiles as well as electronic subscriptions to these journals. They include key titles with long runs in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.
Two copies of complete runs in good condition were identified as consortium archival holdings to be held in perpetuity and not to be withdrawn. Since two archival copies of each title would be kept on behalf of all consortium libraries, other libraries could feel free to withdraw their copies as appropriate.