Special Projects

SILLVR (Streaming Interlibrary Loan for Video Resources)

In January 2020, the Alliance in collaboration with Auraria Library began a pilot for lending streaming video resources from several vendors.  In 2020 this included SWANK who can only lend streaming videos to academic libraries and Films on Demand (FOD).  After the first year, FOD dropped out of the pilot and was replaced by Alexander Street for their AVON streaming videos.  More information is available from Rose Nelson (rose@coalliance.org) or George Machovec (george@coalliance.org).

Demand-Driven Acquisition of E-books

In May 2012, the Alliance launched a Demand-Driven Acquisitions (DDA) e-book pilot with nine of its member libraries. This pilot project worked with three partner organizations: YBP, EBL, and ebrary. The goal of the pilot is to examine costs and usage after a year and determine whether to continue the DDA program, add more publishers, and expand or narrow the group of participating Alliance institutions.  Since the program began ProQuest has consolidated EBL and ebrary into their Ebook Central platform and is still operational as of 2021.

Beginning in fall 2021, ProQuest will began a one year pilot with the Alliance to test interlibrary loan for owned ebooks from six publishers in this program.  The Alliance is one of the participating consortia and will lend these ebooks through the Prospector union catalog.

For more information about the pilot program, contact George Machovec, Executive Director, at george@coalliance.org.

Selected Historical Projects Which Have Ceased

Heritage West Metadata in Omeka

Heritage West was a search interface that allows you to simultaneously search digital collections from cultural heritage institutions in Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming. Originally produced as part of the Colorado Digitization Program (CDP), this historical database is now hosted by the Alliance using the Omeka software. Though no updates or changes are being made to the metadata currently in Heritage West, the Alliance is examining several possibilities for re-use of the Heritage West metadata in digital repositories or other metadata aggregation sites.

Archivists' Toolkit Sites for Alliance Members

 The Alliance is offering free hosting of Archivits' Toolkit for its members. Archivists' Toolkit is open-source software for archival description and other archival management tasks. If you are interested in the software, contact George Machovec, Executive Director, at george-at-coalliance-org.

Prospector FAQ knowledge base

In the summer of 2013 the CO Alliance launched the Prospector FAQ website which captures the in-depth knowledge and expertise from Document Delivery and Catalog Reference committees and presents it in a searchable easy to use knowledge base for library staff.  The knowledge base includes Prospector specific policies and practices for borrowing/lending, holds, paging slips, record loading and other relevant issues. Much of the content has been culled from the Prospector listservs, committee minutes and other knowledge that has been generated over the years. 

High Speed Microform Scanner

A high speed microform scanner has been acquired by a cluster of libraries in the Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries to provide the opportunity for library-initiated and scanning projects of library materials.  The scanner is currently housed at the University of Colorado at Boulder and can be used for the digitization of microfilm and microfiche for both single items as well as larger scale projects. This shared hardware and service provides improved patron access to microform materials through digitization. Historically libraries have made substantial investments in various microformats and this service brings new and improved use to these collections, many of which are not available in other formats. The project also opens the door for grant funding as libraries look to digitize important historical materials. This shared scanner ceased operation in 2019 as most member libraries now have their own equipment and the original high speed scanner is no longer operational

Microform scanner policies for the initiative were jointly developed by the Alliance and participating libraries. Please contact CU/Boulder for details on the initiative.