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By Harold Billings
Texans may not yet realize how rapidly they have become one of the most digitally aware, electronically connected, and digital-dollar supported groups in the country. There have been a number of perhaps surprising means by which this information revolution has occurred. Let me count some of the ways.
The doubling of funding by the 76th Legislature for TexShare programs and the extension of participation to public libraries of this previously all-academic cooperative program are signs that a genuine understanding of the importance of resource sharing in the state has developed. That TexShare would command the support and endorsement of the State Legislature in such a manner, and in such a short time, could not have been suspected a few years ago. Texas librarians have expressed their gratitude to Representative Bob Hunter for his extraordinary legislative support.
Much spadework had been done earlier. Following the lead of the Texas Council of State University Librarians (TCSUL), which early on promoted a plan for library resource sharing in the state, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) was the single most influential organization to embrace this concept and promote its introduction.
Library resource sharing was seen as a means by which the declining value of dollars produced by formula appropriations for public academic libraries could be leveraged to help make up for some of the dramatic shortfalls in purchasing power that began about 1986. THECB and members of TCSUL collaborated in a series of studies and planning efforts that made possible the successful early efforts that helped produce the credibility by which TexShare has lived and, thus far, prospered.
The names of THECB Commissioner Kenneth Ashworth and his colleagues, Dr. Roger Elliott and Dr. David Gardner, need to be recorded as leaders in this effort.
The important early work by information technologists in institutions of higher education in Texas that established the initial infrastructure upon which digital library initiatives could be constructed - the road to carry the load of electronic communication, access to online catalogs, document delivery, digital content, interactive services - cannot be overstated.
The resurgence of leadership at the Texas State Library, especially in an electronic mode, cannot be overlooked. While libraries will immediately miss the departing TSL director, Robert Martin, who has helped place a cooperative face on libraries across the state, there is every indication that Peggy Rudd will bring from her Florida experience major strengths in and a fervor for state-wide resource sharing.
Funding that has been pointed in recent years by the Telecommunications Infrastructure Fund Board towards the enhancement of infrastructures for technology-based learning and library services for the public schools, the community colleges, and now the higher education library institutions speaks directly to a singular influence on that body. That Texas librarians - behind the scenes - have helped private and public leaders learn the importance of both structure and information content for learners from K-12 to the most senior information seekers reflects the important priorities for spending that the TIF Board is now adopting. Let's hope for more.
Plans by the Texas Digital Library Alliance - the five Association of Research Libraries members in the state and the TSL - to establish a Texas Archival Repository Online by encoding finding aids to special collections across the state is just one example of the organizationally-based digitization programs that are emerging.
Water-carrying, truth-telling, arm-twisting Texas Library Association staff and members have been a powerful factor in helping advance most of these initiatives. But I believe there is one factor that has been the single most important in the rapid progress of the information revolution across Texas. That is volunteerism.
Those librarians who have risen before the rooster to drive miles to an airport to carry them to a distant city, as all cities are in Texas, to spend a day discussing how these cooperative programs can be made to work, and then returning home to make it so, are the real heroes here. These volunteers are still at it, and have been joined by ordinary citizens who are also contributing their time.
The beauty of it all is how so many different factions have come together at crucial times to make this a high spot in the provision of library services. It is a good time to think of and even sing of a Beautiful Digital Texas.
Harold Billings is director of General Libraries, the University of Texas at Austin. As a member of the TCSUL Task Force on Statewide Resource Sharing and the subsequent TexShare Steering Committee, he participated in the work that established the 'TexShare Gopher' and additional foundations of the present Texas digital information environment.