What is PALNI?
The Private Academic Library Network of Indiana was founded in 1992 as one of the first state-wide automated resource sharing networks for private academic libraries. Initial funding for PALNI's shared library automation system and network was provided through a 3-year, $4.9M grant from The Lilly Endowment. In addition, The Endowment awarded PALNI a follow-up $2.6M grant in 2001 to further upgrade and enhance its shared system and resource-sharing network. Annual operating costs are shared among the 24 participating small college and seminary libraries throughout the State of Indiana.
The PALNI system is managed by a project team at the Indiana Cooperative Library Services Authority (INCOLSA) in Indianapolis, Indiana. The system includes a shared online library catalog, as well as subsystems to support each library's circulation control, technical services, and reference activities. Select any of the menu choices to learn more about PALNI and its participating libraries.
History of PALNI
PALNI was founded in 1992 as the first state-wide automated resource sharing network for private academic libraries. Initial funding for PALNI's shared library automation system and network was provided through a 3-year, $4.9M grant from The Lilly Endowment.
In addition, The Endowment awarded PALNI a follow-up $2.6M grant in 2002 to further upgrade and enhance its shared system and resource-sharing network. Annual operating costs are shared among the 24 participating small college and seminary libraries throughout the State of Indiana.
PALNI Organization
PALNI, Inc. is organized as a non-profit 501(c)3 corporation to provide shared library services to its 24 participating Indiana colleges, universities, and seminaries. Each PALNI institution has a representative on PALNI's 24-member Board of Directors which has overall responsibility for all PALNI legal, financial, and governance matters. The Board of Directors meets approximately four times per year.
PALNI/INCOLSA
Offices
The Board of Directors elects a five-member Executive Committee with responsibility for operation of the organization. The PALNI EC includes a Chair, Vice Chair/Chair-Elect, Secretary, Treasurer, and Past-Chair, and meets approximately 6 times each year. PALNI library and project staff work together on PALNI issues through various appointed task forces, including the Cost Sharing Task Force, the Digitization Task Force. the New Services and Products Task Force, and the Systems Services Task Force. In addition, PALNI has more than a dozen active email lists that are used regularly to collaborate and exchange information on PALNI-related matters.
PALNI, Inc. contracts with the Indiana Cooperative Library Services Authority (INCOLSA), itself a non-profit library membership organization, to manage the PALNI Project, to operate and administer PALNI's shared systems, and to act as PALNI's fiscal and contract agent. All PALNI libraries are also INCOLSA members.
The PALNI Project Offices, including project staff and the shared PALNI computer systems, are located at INCOLSA's Indianapolis offices. The project staff are part of INCOLSA's Information Technology Department, and include a Project Director, an Administrative Assistant, three full-time library systems professionals, and two computer systems professionals who are shared with INCOLSA.
PALNI member libraries pay annual membership fees to PALNI, Inc. that cover 100% of the costs to operate and manage the PALNI Project and systems. No State or other non-PALNI funds are used to directly support the PALNI systems or organization, and PALNI funds are not used to support any non-PALNI projects, programs, services, or activities at INCOLSA. However, by sharing computer room facilities, network infrastructure, and staff expertise, PALNI and INCOLSA are able to leverage their shared technology needs, and reduce their technology supports costs from what either organization would otherwise incur on its own.
PALNI Shared Values
PALNI Values Statement
(Approved By PALNI Board on November 17, 2005)
PALNI is a 501(c)3 organization that has as supported organizations twenty-four private colleges, universities and seminaries in Indiana. All of these institutions have joined PALNI because of a belief in the power of collaboration as a mechanism for improving library services. The PALNI Board of Directors believes that a broad statement of the values that undergird the organization and a statement of values that guide the implementation of consortium programs are useful tools in reminding ourselves of first principles that should be honored in our work.
Shared
PALNI Values
-
Equity of Service
-
Quality of Service
-
Collaboration & Sharing
-
Innovation
-
Flexibility
-
Efficiency
-
Effective Stewardship
These values establish the context for the consortium and provide a foundational statement for the organization.
-
We achieve more together. Libraries working together make us individually stronger.
-
We respect each supported organization and library. We will strive to understand the needs of each individual supported organization and find common ground to serve the libraries of the supported organizations jointly.
-
We expect to improve the equality of access to information for the students, faculty, and staff of supported organizations. Through our efforts, we strive to level the playing field of access to information resources.
-
We provide leadership. PALNI is committed to being an advocate for supported organizations’ interests and values in state-wide collaborative ventures.
-
We engage in and enable continuous learning. PALNI is committed to the belief that continuous learning is essential in a rapidly changing world.
-
We encourage participation. We will provide opportunities for supported organization participation and engage in open communication in our decision-making and governance.
In developing the programs of PALNI, the supported organizations will strive to honor these values:
-
Equity of service across types and sizes of libraries. While supported organizations may opt for different types and levels of service, we will always strive for equity in terms of common understanding of level of use and ability to pay.
-
High quality of services. We will provide sustainable, affordable, and ready access to services that are tailored to the evolving information needs of supported organizations.
-
Collaboration and resource sharing. We will serve as an effective vehicle for the supported organizations to share their resources, services, programs, and ideas, leverage their purchasing power through group efforts, and, reduce the risk for individual supported organizations.
-
Innovation. PALNI is committed to bringing new services to the libraries of supported organizations, making supported organizations aware of best practices, and encouraging innovation among our supported organizations.
-
Flexiblity and responsiveness to supported organizations' needs as we continuously adapt to the change that affects us. We will strive to find ways to address change, to understand it and its impact, to accommodate to it, and to prompt change that helps us better achieve our goals.
-
Efficiency in all of our operations. Limited budgets of supported organizations make it essential that operations of PALNI be consistent with these financial constraints.
-
Effective stewardship. PALNI is committed to the effective use of the resources that supported organizations entrust to the consortium.*
* We are grateful for the work of other consortia on value statements from which we have borrowed heavily:
PALNI Shared Systems
The PALNI shared system uses the Aleph
integrated library automation software from Ex Libris to
implement an online public-access catalog, local cataloging,
authority control, circulation control, acquisitions, and serials control
for participating libraries. By sharing a central system and
union catalog, PALNI libraries are able to
reduce overall system administration and maintenance costs.
At the same time, Systems Librarians in each library have the
flexibility to configure and customize the shared Aleph
system to meet unique local library requirements.
The Aleph software runs on a Sun MicroSystems SunFire
6800 server with 10 processors, 24 GigaBytes of Main Memory, and 1.5
Terrabytes of online RAID disk storage. The shared server has been
configured into two independent "domains", one functioning as the
PALNI shared production sytem, and the second acting
as a smaller test server. The production system is licensed to support
up to 500 concurrent online users.
During the Summer, 2005, PALNI upgraded its Aleph
implementation to the latest Version 17-2 release of the software.
Each library is able to customize and maintain the shared system and
Online Public Access Catalog to meet its own local campus needs.
New Aleph software releases and system enhancements are
installed as they become available from Ex Libris.
The PALNI online union catalog now includes 1.9 million
unique bibligraphic records and 3.4 million item records representing the
combined collections of twenty-two of the twenty-four PALNI
libraries. The remaining two PALNI libraries maintain
their own, independent stand-alone library automation systems, but
participate in reciprocal borrowing and other resource-sharing arrangements
with all PALNI libraries.
In addition to Aleph, the PALNI system offers
students, faculty, and staff at PALNI institutions access
to online reference services and databases through the MetaLib/SFX
web-based library "portal". MetaLib includes standard
OpenURL resolver capabilities, and can be customized by each
PALNI library to provide access to its own local
collection of electronic databases.
PALNI libraries also share a ContentDM
digital library server to digitize, catalog, and provide web access
to unique collections of images and other digitized content held by
each library. PALNI's combined digital library
collections include more than 30,000 digitized objects, are projected
to grow to more than 100,000 objects over the next 12 months.
PALNI is listed as an official "data provider" with the
Open Archives Initiative.
The PALNI shared systems and project offices are
located at the Indiana Cooperative Library Services Authority (INCOLSA)
in Indianapolis, Indiana. The computer room at INCOLSA is fully secured
and climate controlled, and supports reliable, round-the-clock, system
operation. PALNI libraries are connected to the central
system using the Indiana Higher Education Telecommunications System (IHETS)
state-wide TCP/IP network and the Internet.
PALNI Network
PALNI was one of the first large-scale library automation network to use the Internet as its primary "production" link between participating libraries and the central, shared computer system. The central PALNI shared system is connected to the Internet via a dedicated T1 circuit to the Indiana Higher Education Telecommunications System (IHETS) in Indianapolis, IN. PALNI Project staff also have full access to INCOLSA's 45Mbps ENA Internet connection, and have access to the Internet 2 Abilene backbone. PALNI has been an IHETS member organization since 1992, and in the early 1990's helped to fund implementation of IHETS' original state-wide Internet backbone for Indiana academic institutions.
PALNI Internet Traffic
PALNI libraries are distributed geographically throughout the state of Indiana, with the largest concentrations of sites in the Indianapolis area and in the northeast quadrant of the state. Each PALNI library is linked to the PALNI central system via its own campus connection to the Internet.
The PALNI Project shares its connection to the Internet with both INCOLSA and Indiana's statewide INSPIRE Project. This gives both INCOLSA and PALNI Project staff full access to the Internet, supports various INCOLSA/PALNI Web Servers, listservs, databases, and other INCOLSA-related information resources, and reduces telecommunications overall telecommunications costs for these organizations and projects.
The PALNI/INCOLSA/INSPIRE Network is monitored continuously for any network problems, and staff are paged automatically within a few minutes of a network problem either on the INCOLSA/PALNI Local Area Network or between the PALNI system and any PALNI library. Network traffic statistics are kept continuously up-to-date.
PALNI and Open Source
PALNI and Open Source
Since its inception in 1992, PALNI has been committed to implementing and utilizing Open Source Software (OSS) and supports the principles and practices of the open source community.
OSS is software that is free to use, but more importantly, the source code of the application is made available for further local development and redistribution. The genesis of the Internet began as a “call for comments” from ARPANET in the 1960’s. Later landmarks would include the code release of the now iconic Linux operating system in 1987 and Netscape’s Navigator internet browser in 1998. The OSS movement has received a lot of attention in the library community in recent years as individual libraries have begun to develop their own Content Management Systems and Integrated Library Systems.
Vince Lucas, the PALNI Project Director, states “Open Source is about choice; not just the access to the source code and software, but the choice of which tools work best for your needs.” Vince also points out that libraries and the open source movement share similar goals and philosophies – free and open access to information and content, sharing, collaboration, and community.
Over the years, Central Staff have utilized a wide variety of OSS for numerous functions within the organization’s infrastructure. The PALNI website, helpdesk, listservs, and server environment all rely heavily on OSS. The staff continues to research and evaluate a broad range of OSS for possible application. Test installations are used to determine if these programs might have relevance for PALNI operations. Central Staff have also customized source code for local use.
The PALNI Project is happy to utilize and support the following open source applications and protocols. This list is not meant to be exhaustive, but merely representative of the range of OSS functionality within the PALNI systems. The full list literally includes hundreds of applications, protocols, and add-ons.
