Implementing OCLC WorldShare at Goldsmiths College
 

This year at Interlend 2013, sponsors OCLC were offering a free trial of their brand new WorldShare ILL platform. Elisabeth Robinson offered a demonstration at the conference of the new streamlined workflow which allows the ILL administrator to find suppliers from within the platform, using the WorldCat database. 

I'm not totally convinced that the workflow won't create a duplication of work, for the particular way we process ILL at Goldsmiths, and we may still find we need to use other databases such as Copac to find what we need. However I am looking forward to trying something new and will keep the blog updated on the progress of the trial!  -LL

Annual stats

It's that time of year again, when we start gathering the statistics to see how Inter Library Requests have performed over the last academic year. And my first quick look seems to indicate that the numbers have dropped significantly this year compared with last. With better e-resources and more use of Open Access sources, I suppose this is to be expected. However, whilst overall figures are down, the number of renewals has increased. This makes me question just how the service is being used; is it just an extension of our library service, or something more?

We also introduced on-line request forms this year, and the number of requests coming to us this way is a healthy proportion of the total.  Staff and researchers seem to appreciate the ease of the system and we can now truly say we have a desktop-to-desktop delivery service.

I'd be very interested to know how other HEI services are 'shaping up'. And, of course, this could all feed into the Benchmarking exercise already mentioned on the blog, with overall trends being discussed at Interlend 2014; with your help, that is!

FIL accounts have arrived

I am now officially FIL Treasurer as the 7 boxes of 'stuff' have now arrived.

They are curling up nicely with Dewey, the Library cat. The rest of my colleagues are moaning already as the spare visitor's chair used to be tucked away there. I already take up most of the spare office space with the rest of my 'stuff'.  When your job is primarily about books you can't help but take up a lot of room!

Anyway, I've already bombarded Chris, our outgoing, Treasurer, with questions.  Luckily, she's very patient and doesn't make me feel stupid.

The FIL account is now back home in Swansea. The first FIL Treasurer was from Swansea University and so the account was opened up in Swansea.  Once I've started mailing out invoices for our next event I'll be back to let you know how I'm getting on.  Meanwhile, just got to empty those boxes!

Update on the Upgrade at Huddersfield

Well, as of 4 o’clock, our old Clio system has been taken off-line and Jennifer Perkins is going to load our database into the new version over the weekend.

As those of you who have seen it demonstrated, this new Clio is the first ILL management system that has been developed to interoperate with BLDSS. So we get the benefits of the new functionality within British Library’s new Document Supply Service whilst, at the same time, being able to administer our requests using our ILL management system.

When we first implemented Clio after the demise of Lancaster’s ILLOS, it came in three interconnected modules which we found quite challenging to get used to, but the new version comes as an all in one package. Our Clio will also be hosted by the supplier, just like ILLOS was, which takes a bit of the worry out of the maintenance and future upgrades.

Over the past few weeks Jennifer has supplied some nifty apps to cleanup any erroneous records in our database and has provided a ‘live’ test system, linking to the BLDSS test system for us to have play. This week I have also had the opportunity to customise the text within the various messages and notifications.

If you have seen the system demonstrated you’ll appreciate that we are now looking forward to having a go for real….but if any of you receive any ‘odd messages’ form Huddersfield, I’ll apologies beforehand…and do let us know so that we can put them right.

Fingers crossed for Monday! 

And we’ll keep you posted!

Weekend starts here so I’m settling down with a cuppa before I get in the garden.

Chris

Announcing the Forum for Interlending and Document Supply Benchmarking Project

As those of you who attended Interlend13 in Cardiff will already know, the FIL Committee are considering undertaking a Benchmarking Exercise of ILL/Document Delivery Services.

Of course, FIL already collects, and makes available centrally, information about the following aspects of our members’ services:

• ·         ILL Management Systems

• ·         Thesis Loans Policies

• ·         End-user charges

Extending this facility, by collecting information on other features of our ILL services might provide a useful source of data for members to compare their own services against. Such information is often useful to compare the efficiency and effectiveness of our own services and to identify examples of best practice that are worth emulating.

If you would be interested in contributing to an inter-library Loans/Document Delivery Benchmarking Project please complete a modest scoping questionnaire at:

http://www.survey.bris.ac.uk/hud/fil_scop_bnchmrk

(That’s filunderscorescopunderscorebnchmrk)

This will gauge whether there is enough interest amongst FIL members to make the project a worthwhile undertaking, and the results will also inform the creation of a comprehensive data collection questionnaire to be sent out later in the year.

By the way, if your organisation is not a member of FIL but you would be interested in participating, in the Benchmarking Project you are very welcome. Fill out the questionnaire. But why not also consider joining, there are lots of benefits for members http://www.forumforinterlending.org.uk/fil-membership-benefits , not least the opportunity for networking with other practitioners in your field, and all for just £50.00 a year!

Thanks in advance !

(Created using http://worditout.com/ )