Many interlibrary loans departments are seeing their remit
change at the moment, and we at the University of Essex have been no exception.
Most recently, we have been involved in a new digitisation project, linked to
our reading list system Talis Aspire. This should provide an interesting
addition to the work of the department, beyond our traditional ILL activities.
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| Source: http://morguefile.com/ |
Previously, the ILL department would request copyright fee
paid paper copies of articles and chapters not held in the library at the
request of our subject librarians. However, library services and students’
expectations have moved on. With our reading lists and so many of the library’s
resources online, we needed to catch up. In our new system, digitisation
requests can be made by librarians or lecturers themselves via their reading
lists, and will then be handled by ILL, either scanned from our own collection
or purchased from the British Library via EHESS or elsewhere. Further to this,
we will be digitising our previous paper copy collection and digitising
extracts from physical items in our collection to add to reading lists. Helping
to set up the system and making sure it works as effectively as possible will
take some time and effort, but will be well worth it, particularly for our
students, who will be able to access these digitisations quickly, easily and
remotely- a great improvement from our current service.
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| Source: http://morguefile.com/ |
The work of interlending and document delivery departments
has changes a lot in recent years, particularly as technologies have developed,
and it looks like this won’t be stopping any time soon. One outcome of this is
that ILL is being increasingly entwined with activities such as digitisation,
and this goes to show how this area of library and information work is evolving
to keep up with the digital world in which we are operating, all to the benefit
of our users.
I’m really looking forward, along with my colleagues at
Essex, to getting our teeth into this project, and seeing how it changes our
work in ILL.
