VIVA Outreach
Publicity & Promotional Materials
This editorial originally appeared in the Roanoke Times & World News, April 13, 1999, p.A9. Reprinted with
permission. Paul Metz is principal bibliographer of the Virginia Tech University Libraries.
A Virtual Library for Virginians Vive VIVA !
by Paul Metz
Roanoke Times & World News, April 13, 1999
Page A9
(Copyright 1999, reproduced with permission)
It seems to be commonly assumed that institutions of higher education are too territorial, too
competitive, too set in their ways to work together. Such beliefs to the contrary, it is possible for
institutions of higher education to cooperate. I offer as evidence the following:
A student in a Charlottesville sorority house incorporating quotations from scientific journals
into her paper on acid rain and freshwater fish.
A math professor at Norfolk State University checking whether a specialized book he needs for a
seminar is still in print.
A business student at Tidewater Community College determining the financial ratios of a new
Internet provider.
A fully employed mother at home in Abingdon, sorting through references for a graduate-level,
Internet-based engineering course she is taking from Virginia Tech.
Each of these hypothetical individuals, whose actions represent real events that transpire tens of
thousands of times each month in the commonwealth's institutions of higher education, is
benefiting from the cooperative efforts of librarians from around the state, working within a
framework established by a forward-looking State Council of Higher Education and made
possible by the bipartisan support of the General Assembly. The success story that makes their
work possible is often as unknown to them as it is to most readers of this newspaper. Its name is
VIVA .
The Virtual Library of Virginia was conceived when the higher- education council
communicated to the library community its willingness to consider sponsoring a statewide
library consortium. Library leaders responded with alacrity to the overture and submitted a
successful proposal leading to state funding for the 1994-96 biennium.
In the five years since VIVA was begun, an enormous array of resources has been made
available to the faculty, staff and students of Virginia's colleges and universities. VIVA supports
dozens of databases providing immediate bibliographies on subjects within virtually every
academic field.
An increasing percentage of the records in some of these databases yield not only references to
articles, but also their full text. Entire libraries of electronic journals are maintained, including
175 titles from Academic Press and 42 from the Johns Hopkins University Press.
Reference databases filled with statistical, biographical or other factual data make it possible to
obtain such varied information as import-export data, literary biographies and criticism, or
information on health products and practices. By license agreement, the vendors' costly resources
are protected so that use is limited to authorized users - students and faculty at the VIVA
member schools.
Some of the resources VIVA offers were already available in print at the largest institutions.
Online access has created savings through cancellation of duplicative subscriptions to expensive
print journals. Many resources would always have been beyond the price range of the smaller
institutions, but are now available to all.
By pooling its purchasing power and by giving vendors a single contract to negotiate, VIVA has
obtained resources for a fraction - as little as 13 percent - of what separate subscriptions for each
institution would have cost. In many cases, Virginia's private colleges and universities, who are
represented within the VIVA membership in an encouraging example of private-public
cooperation, have been able to piggyback onto the lower prices made possible by VIVA 's
purchasing power, in order to acquire electronic resources they otherwise could not afford.
Electronic databases, several of which receive more than 2,000 Internet "hits" per day from
VIVA users, are not the only value VIVA provides. About a quarter of the $2.5 million in VIVA
's annual funding has gone for upgraded library computer equipment and other forms of support,
mainly to underwrite interlibrary lending that makes the collections of every library available to
each.
Although VIVA represents an initiative all Virginians can take pride in, its ongoing success is
the result of continuing hard work by librarians at all levels within the state's academic libraries.
Once a month or so, I join colleagues from other doctoral institutions, four-year colleges such as
James Madison University, community colleges and private institutions in selecting new
products, in approving renewal of old ones, and in exploring ways to improve and increase the
use of our resources. Through VIVA we are putting into the hands of today's students the
electronic tools they will need to succeed in tomorrow's jobs.
Not all aspects of higher education have potential economies of scale or otherwise lend
themselves to cooperation. Sometimes the costs of cooperative planning cannot be recovered.
Sometimes competition for students or grant support isn't all bad.
But the five-year success of VIVA proves that in well-chosen, targeted areas, with state
understanding and support, colleges and universities can achieve significant synergies. With
continued support from its member institutions, the State Council of Higher Education and the
General Assembly, VIVA will prove its value again and again, year after year.
PAUL METZ is principal bibliographer of the Virginia Tech University Libraries.