Taking the Initiative—Tim Bucknall

While libraries everywhere bemoaned rising journal costs, Tim Bucknall took action. He spearheaded the virtual “Carolina Consortium,” which, in 2005, got member schools about $84 million of content for $4 million. He started the group “with a few phone calls and no institutional investment (other than my time).”

Taking the lead defines Bucknall's career. He planned and helped build Journal Finder, the first OpenURL link resolver in U.S. production. Although originally created for UNCG, “We had so many other schools ask that we decided to offer it to others,” he says. Currently, 27 colleges and universities use Journal Finder, and UNCG is considering rewriting more easily sharable code. This same initiative shows in OpenURL-like catalog enhancements, which let UNCG connect catalog data to other sources without creating MARC 856 fields for each record. “My philosophy is to try to make things easy for patrons and bring together different data sources as seamlessly as possible.”

Bucknall is particularly proud of how his Electronic Resources and Information Technologies (ERIT) team works together to resolve issues—and they couldn't be prouder of him. Team member Richard Cox says, “[I] moved from the private sector back into academia because I wanted to work for Tim.” Together, Bucknall and his team continue taking the initiative to fill in the gaps.