By Jacob Long
Bryn Mawr College
jlong1@brynmawr.edu
Last month, the library resource sharing community saw the launch of a new information hub: Shared Sphere. The hub exists to centralize freely available resources that can assist practitioners in learning the fundamentals of resource sharing as well as exploring more niche and specialized topics. While not all resources referenced on the site are, in fact, freely available, they are at minimum requestable via traditional interlibrary loan services and therefore require no particular organizational or member affiliations to access.
The site was created by Jacob Long, Interlibrary Loan Coordinator at Bryn Mawr College. Jacob has presented and published on his experience as a newer practitioner. Both the presentation and publication prompted various members in the community to contact him asking for further guidance on resources to help acclimate to the vast world of library resource sharing. Inspired by the positive feedback, Jacob considered that creating a centralized online index may be a worthwhile endeavor, and he looked at ways to incorporate building a website into his MLS program as a capstone project. Ultimately, the project didn’t come to fruition during his degree, but he was able to work on the site concurrently with his work and studies. For more information about how and why Shared Sphere was built, please see the About page.
The bulk of the information rests within the In Practice page, where resources are linked based upon a variety of broad topics, such as accessibility, software solutions, and collaboration. A discerning visitor to the site will quickly realize that Shared Sphere does not reference everything relevant to the resource sharing community. Given Jacob’s geographic (East Coast, United States) and linguistic (English) constraints, Shared Sphere favors certain references over others. This is not the intended final state of the site. Indeed, the hope is that Shared Sphere becomes a crowdsourced information hub, not unlike the International ILL Toolkit, and increases visibility not only for resources that may pertain to other regions in the U.S., but also the entire world. For this reason, the site maintains a Submissions page which links to a Google Form where missing resources may be submitted for inclusion on the site. If desired, submitters can note that they’d like to be cited for their contribution(s) to Shared Sphere by having their name appear on the Gratitude page.
Long is currently the only site operator. However, sustainability is top of mind as he considers ways to make certain the site remains operational should he decide to retire to an off-grid cabin. In the coming months, expect more communication about potential paths forward regarding communal governance of the hub. For now, though, please find use in Shared Sphere, spread the word, and submit tools and resources, to fill in current omissions, that may be useful to other practitioners.
Author Bio
Jacob Long (he/him) has worked in resource sharing since September 2023, when he started his current role as the Interlibrary Loan Coordinator at Bryn Mawr College. He spent his childhood practicing for work in resource sharing by placing an endless array of borrowing requests through his public library. He is a member of the RSCVD Steering Committee, the RUSA STARS International ILL Committee, and RUSA Budget & Finance. He has an MSLS from Pennsylvania Western University. He is particularly interested in global resource sharing, rethinking digital sharing strategies, and vendor-agnostic resource sharing resources & communities.