Using open access resources to fulfill inter-library loan requests by Lynette Summers

During one of the breakout sessions at the FIL Interlend Conference 2014, Caroline Rauter and I invited delegates to consider the possibilities for and the implications of using open access resources to fulfil inter-library loan requests.

The breakout session kicked off with a short presentation highlighting the fact that open access material is only set to increase and that this needs to be embraced by the inter-library loan community. Delegates were urged to start considering how open access impacts on their workflows and overall service provision. In fact, it became more than apparent during the course of the breakout session that this is something a number of the participants had already begun thinking about.

In the second half of the breakout session, delegates were split into four groups and each group was set a question to contemplate and feed back on. 

The questions were as follows:

1. Has the OA message reached you from within your organisation? How did it reach you?

2. Information seeking: do you ever search for OA material? How do you search for OA material?

3. What are the barriers to fulfilling requests using open access?

4. Workflows: automated or customised software solutions – are you using them?

The questions prompted much animated discussion (phew!) and, as you’ll see from the round-up slides (pp. 8-13), a lot of interesting points. Some of the points had been anticipated, but others, such as the idea that inter-library loan teams charge for their time when fulfilling inter-library loan requests with open access resources, were enlightening (at least to this non-ILL practioner).

Please take some time to look through the slides as a means of becoming more familiar with this topic and prompting further discussion. There is also an Open Access Resources – Discovery Tools page that Caroline put together following the breakout session. The page lists a number of resources where open access material can be found and it is our intention to keep this page up-to-date.

It is hoped that members of the interlending community can benefit from using quality open access content with confidence alongside commercially available content. This should be a rapidly evolving area and one that we will be watching with interest.

Interlend 2014 - Reflections

Well, where do I begin? 

I hope you all had a safe and pleasant journey home from Edinburgh. I'm afraid my journey wasn't so straight forward! 

After hailing a cab to take the Welsh contingent to the airport, we seemed to manage to choose Edinburgh's very own special taxi man 'Kenny 'The Shuffler' Taylor - for those of you intrigued, please see these various 'Shuffler' links. All I can say is that I'm glad I wasn't alone!

On arriving at the airport we made it to the check-in which was due to open shortly. We headed for some refreshments to pass the time, we'd just sat down when all our mobiles went off - a text from the airline in orange to confirm that our flight had been cancelled due to the French air traffic strike - our plane was coming from France! 

So, we spent the next few hours queuing, sitting around and waiting for the airline in orange to sort us out. We ended up, sharing 2 rooms in a very ropy Travelodge approximately 10 minute walk from Princes Street! The moral of the story is – don’t ever travel with me & pack spare underwear (which I did luckily!) You either get stranded in Edinburgh or stuck at Bristol Parkway!

Anyway, now that I've shared my Edinburgh horror story, my thoughts turn to the conference. 

I hope that all those who came enjoyed it and were able to take something back to their workplace for the future. The highlight for me was Antony Brewerton’s keynote; I thought his presentation was excellent and gave some real food for thought about marketing our services.

Nearly all the presentations are on the FIL Website – just a few last stragglers to get hold of.

Thanks to everyone who came and especially to those of you who filled in an evaluation form, we need to know what our members want so that we can plan next year’s conference!  

Marie Lancaster

(Outgoing Chair)

Photo Credit:
 <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/39997856@N03/7484979350/">mariusz kluzniak</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/">cc</a>

A Warm Welcome

A Warm Welcome

With the advent of a few lovely sunny days (well we have been rather lucky here in Essex) I would like, on behalf of the FIL Committee to extend a very warm welcome to our new committee members who were voted in at the AGM held during the Annual FIL Conference in Edinburgh in June.

I know I speak on behalf of the whole committee that we were delighted to get 5 nominees for the 5 open spaces on the committee, and I’m really happy to say that Marjory Lobban, Joanne Docherty, Karen Paine, Claudia Howard and Lesley Butler agreed to join us to continue the hard work in organising the variety of FIL events for the future.

Good Luck everyone J see you in October

Sandra

photo credit: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/30120954@N03/14298203314/">Alan Shearman</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/">cc</a>

Farewell FIL & Cheers!

This is my last ever post as FIL Chair - hankies at the ready!

I'm looking forward to Edinburgh, and hope that the programme, as well as the surroundings, lives up to expectations!

This year it was impractical to organise as visit, however with a slightly earlier finish on day 1, I hope that those who are staying will be able to at least venture on to the Royal Mile.
It is literally opposite the hotel, so do try and get a taste of Edinburgh! If any of you see any nice tartan trousers on your travels, be sure to let Chris Beevers our FIL Secretary know!

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my time on the committee and will be sorry to step down, however I’m sure with new blood and renewed enthusiasm the FIL committee will continue to thrive and prosper!

Cheers!

Marie

FIL Chair

A love letter to KVK

I am writing this as a former Interlending and Document Delivery Officer at King's College London and soon to be former member of the Forum for Interlending Committee. I will genuinely miss being involved in sharing resources (and ideas) as well as supporting the excellent work of FIL.

I thought I might write my last blog post with an anecdote that will possibly segue into a ramble.

A few years ago now whilst working at King's College London my department received a visit from a librarian who had visited King's under the Erasmus scheme.  I think he might have been from Estonia.  Anyway, he had a chat with all the different teams in the Information Resources department.  When he got to the Interlending and Document Delivery team we ended up having a talk about his interest in photography.  He'd travelled a lot around Eastern Europe taking photos of trains and railway stations if I can recall rightly.  It was very interesting so we ended up going off topic for the most of our discussion.  Towards the end though I think I expressed my frustration about trying to find decent union catalogues.  It was at this time that he showed me something that really impressed me.  It was the KVK or the Karlsruher Virtueller Katalog.  

Now I have no idea who created it, I have no idea what the motivation was.  I have to say however that it really helped me locate resources internationally.  It's hosted by Karlsruher Institut für Technologie and is a "meta search interface" that includes union catalogues from all over the world.  It behaves in a similar way to Search25 in that it searches other catalogues simultaneously but instead of searching through higher education libraries within Greater London (or thereabouts) it searches through a range of union catalogues worldwide (as well as some book vendors and repositories).

It's very helpful when you've gone through all the typical avenues you might use.  For example I would typically search through Copac, Search25, Suncat, Pubmed, Worldcat and so forth.  But the KVK is a portal with a much broader range of locations.  And wielding IFLA vouchers I would tactfully approach (often with the aid of Google Translate) a prospective library.  When such an exchange was successful and I was able to get a library user the resource they wanted it was a good feeling.  

In fact it was one of the great aspects of being involved in this sort of work.  What people sometimes forget is that libraries are generally not obligated to share their resources with other libraries.  There is a sense to me that librarians share their resources because in some way it contributes positively to research and learning. It will in the very least help the library user achieve their current goal - whatever that is. Most really appreciated what we do.  OK, it's also true that Interlending staff have to justify their roles by generating revenue. Sharing resources is just what you do when you do this type of job. But you could, if you wanted to, avoid doing something you felt involved too much time/effort. Not everyone responds cordially to a request for something where they feel it's not convenient to fulfil.  But in my opinion most do.  Having the opportunity to collaborate with people the world over actively involved in resource sharing was genuinely rewarding.  

Attending the last IFLA ILDS Conference made me realise how people share resources worldwide and that there's so much more we can learn from each other in terms of good practice and service development.  Libraries in the UK all do things differently also.  But there's a real sense of good will among Interlending practitioners here and a desire to get the job of resource sharing done together.  Where there are different approaches encountered there are potential innovations to be considered and perhaps implemented.  Attending FIL Conferences was always such a great way to assess how you could improve your service.
 

I hope those that attend this year's conference all come away with ideas to further push their service forward.  It's a great job to be doing.

Mark Kluzek

Leaving FIL

Sadly, it's time for me to say goodbye to FIL and my fellow committee members... 

[CC Image: Flickr/woodleywonderworks]

I have had a brilliant time being a committee member for FIL, and have learned so much more about interlending - the benefits to my professional life have been so valuable. I've also had the opportunity to see what goes on behind the scenes when organising our annual conference, Interlend (it takes all year, from the moment the last one ends!).

Since accepting a new job that doesn't involve any interlending, I can no longer be a committee member, but would definitely recommend it to ILL staff of all levels. I was just a lowly library assistant when I joined the committee last year, but was warmly welcomed by a friendly and passionate bunch!!

Of course I still have a keen interest in interlending and especially developments in copyright, so I'll continue to follow @FIL_ILL for the latest news :)

Goodbye FIL and thanks for having me!

-Lucy Lambe

Bye bye FIL ...

This week I have been getting ready for a FIL meeting. Each year, we have 4 face to face meetings and tel-con meetings in-between. This is a tel-con and we will be discussing the last minute things the Committee needs to do to make Interlend 2014 a success.

One of the tasks I need to complete is the delegates list (so you can have a sneaky peek at who else is at Interlend) and also send some goodies for the delegate packs up to the Carlton Hotel in Edinburgh...

This is my last FIL meeting as my time on the Committee is now ending :( 

It will be sad to say goodbye to everyone, but my time with the group has been really valuable, both personally and professionally> I think learning what goes on in the different sectors has been especially interesting. The one thing that always surprises me is that essentially all inter lenders are doing the same task - receiving a request, finding the item and then supplying it - but we all do it in so many different ways ... Perhaps that's an ice breaker topic when you get to Interlend ..? I will leave you to ponder that ...

Bye bye FIL ... Hope to catch up soon 

Jennie

Marketing Officer