Libraries

New Names: I-Share and CARLI

The Board of Directors of the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI) recently announced I-Share logothe renaming of the ILLINET Online catalog to I-Share (visit the I-Share catalog and the WIU Library Catalog -- a sub-set of I-Share). Additionally the group of libraries who use the system to support local library operations and resource sharing will be referred to as the "I-Share libraries". The term "ILLINET Online" came into use in January 1988 to describe the online catalog and resource sharing system used by member libraries of the Illinois Library Computer Systems Organization (ILCSO).

In July 2005 ILCSO, the Illinois Digital Academic Library (IDAL), and the Illinois Cooperative Collection Management Program (ICCMP) were consolidated into a single organization, CARLI, to serve the higher education community in CARLI logoIllinois. As the consolidation progresses during this initial transition year it will be necessary to gradually change the many references to the three legacy consortia. In many cases it is possible to simply use "CARLI" to replace a reference to a previous consortium and/or the services it provided. However, "CARLI" is not an accurate replacement in all contexts. One of these instances is ILLINET Online. ILLINET Onlines public access catalog (now I-Share) provides the capability for users to search all participating libraries at once. It would be inaccurate to refer to I-Share as the "CARLI Catalog" since it includes the records of the 65 former ILCSO libraries but not all 181 current CARLI libraries.

Sixty five Illinois academic and research libraries (including WIU) use I-Share to support their local operations, as well as to share resources among themselves and with the Illinois library community at large. The system traces its roots back more than 25 years. I-Share holds records representing 8.9 million unique titles and 31.5 million items. I-Share has supported more than 9.3 million resource sharing transactions since 1979. The I-Share libraries initiated 302,000 resource sharing transactions among themselves during FY 2005, and loaned 42,000 items to Illinois libraries outside of the I-Share group.