SHARE, the Largest Automation Consortium in North America, is Live on Aspen Discovery with ByWater Support

by Elise Aiello on Nov 15, 2024

ByWater Solutions, an open-source community contributor and America’s forefront provider of Open Source library technology support, announced today that the SHARE (Illinois Heartland Library System) is now live on Aspen Discovery with ByWater Support. SHARE is the largest automation consortium in North America and there are 473 unique catalogs in the system. The implementation has been in phases and all catalogs in the consortium will be live by the end of 2024. SHARE consists of academic, public, school, and special libraries.

The current list of SHARE's Aspen catalogs can be found here.

Cassandra Thompson, SHARE Director, recently commented on the implementation:

The Bywater Solutions team has been fantastic to work with! SHARE is the largest automation consortium in North America, and setting up 473 new catalogs is no small feat! We have been so happy with the service that we have received, with extensive training and support from Bywater throughout the process."

About SHARE

SHARE is a collection of libraries in central and southern Illinois that have joined together to form the largest automation consortium in the country, with 362 members at 480 locations. There are many benefits to SHARE membership, including the ability to share the cost of purchasing an integrated library system, staff, technical support, and training.

What this means is that member libraries share the cost of maintaining an expensive, but highly necessary technology, that makes the end-user’s experience more enjoyable. All of those services that patrons have come to expect—hold lists, speedy checkouts, and online catalogs—happen because of this technology. In fiscal year 2024, we filled over 1.15 million holds, a feat made possible because we are committed to Sharing Heartland's Available Resources Equally (SHARE).

The size of the consortium means that our patrons have access to almost 8.5 million items, which they can order from their home library, their home computer, or their mobile device, and have delivered within days to their home library via the IHLS Functional 5-Day Delivery. In our fiscal year 2024, our patrons checked out almost 7 million items, which is over 300,000.

Read more about SHARE here: https://share.illinoisheartlan...

About ByWater Solutions

ByWater Solutions is a full service, high-quality Open Source support and implementation company dedicated to providing libraries with a lower cost, more advanced level of support for their systems than a traditional proprietary solution can offer. ByWater Solutions has a proven track record in the first-rate implementation and support services with library systems of all sizes for the Koha, Aspen Discovery, Metabase, and Libki.

Our highly ranked, comprehensive support is what sets our company apart from any other vendor in the industry. Partnering with ByWater Solutions not only lowers the cost of implementation and maintenance of OSS but more importantly empowers libraries by giving them the flexibility and freedom they deserve. For more information please visit https://bywatersolutions.com.

About Aspen Discovery

Aspen is a full-featured Discovery System that integrates with e-content and other 3rd party providers, giving your patrons comprehensive access to all of your materials in one place. Aspen combines your library catalog with e-content, digital archives, and enrichment from all major third-party providers improves relevancy and ease of use, provides native reading recommendations, displays all formats of titles within one result (FRBR), and much more.

Aspen was created to give users an improved experience over other Discovery systems with less of an impact on library budgets. Aspen Discovery also includes a companion APP, Aspen LiDA, that gives your patrons an intuitive, user-friendly way to manage their own library experience. For more information about Aspen please visit https://bywatersolutions.com/projects/aspen-discovery.

For More Information

Elise Aiello
Partner Engagement Specialist
ByWater Solutions
bywatersolutions.com
Phone:(888)900-8944