Resources Anytime, Anywhere. How Interlibrary Loan Becomes Resource Sharing [1st Edition] 9780081019900, 9780081019894

Table of contents :
Content:
Chandos Information Professional Series,Front Matter,Copyright,Dedications,List of Figures,Biography,Contributors,Acknowledgments,Introduction: Interlibrary Loan and the Transition to Resource SharingEntitled to full textChapter 1 - The Changing Roles of ILL Staff, Supply-Chain Management, Pages 1-35
Chapter 2 - Technology and The Evolution of Resource Sharing, Pages 37-55
Chapter 3 - Resources Anytime, Anywhere, Pages 57-95
Chapter 4 - Resource Sharing: The Evolution, Pages 97-116
Chapter 5 - Where Do We Go From Here?, Pages 117-131
Index, Pages 133-136

Citation preview

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RESOURCES ANYTIME, ANYWHERE

How Interlibrary Loan Becomes Resource Sharing RYAN LITSEY Texas Tech University

Chandos Publishing is an imprint of Elsevier 50 Hampshire Street, 5th Floor, Cambridge, MA 02139, United States The Boulevard, Langford Lane, Kidlington, OX5 1GB, United Kingdom Copyright © 2017 Ryan Litsey. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Details on how to seek permission, further information about the Publisher’s permissions policies and our arrangements with organizations such as the Copyright Clearance Center and the Copyright Licensing Agency, can be found at our website: www.elsevier.com/permissions. This book and the individual contributions contained in it are protected under copyright by the Publisher (other than as may be noted herein). Notices Knowledge and best practice in this field are constantly changing. As new research and experience broaden our understanding, changes in research methods, professional practices, or medical treatment may become necessary. Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility. To the fullest extent of the law, neither the Publisher nor the authors, contributors, or editors, assume any liability for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions, or ideas contained in the material herein. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-0-08-101989-4 (print) ISBN: 978-0-08-101990-0 (online) For information on all Chandos Publishing publications visit our website at https://www.elsevier.com/books-and-journals

Publisher: Joe Hayton Acquisition Editor: George Knott Editorial Project Manager: Lindsay Lawrence Production Project Manager: Debasish Ghosh Designer: Mark Rogers Typeset by TNQ Books and Journals

To my beautiful wife, without whose support this book would not be ­possible.To Mom, Dad, Michael, and Steven—thank you. Ryan Litsey

LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1 Figure 1.2 Figure 1.3 Figure 2.1 Figure 2.2

Rotation duty roster. 31 Sample rotation schedule. 32 Sample line backup schedule. 32 IDS logic. 49 Article gateway system. 50

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BIOGRAPHY Ryan Litsey is the Associate Librarian and Head of Document Delivery at Texas Tech University. A graduate of Florida State University with a degree in Library and Information Sciences, he has spent a majority of his academic career developing groundbreaking technologies that have endeavored to transform resource sharing. Both Occams Reader and the stats tracking system OBILLSK have changed the way ILL librarians are able to share the resources of their respective institutions. Ryan was recognized by the Library Journal as a 2016 Mover and Shaker in library technology. He is also active in several ALA–RUSA/STARS committees. He is a consulting editor for the Journal of Access Services and the associate editor for the Journal of Interlibrary Loan Document Delivery & Electronic Reserve. His academic research is in resource sharing, machine learning, predictive analytics, and anticipatory commerce.

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CONTRIBUTORS Nancy Abashian, Binghamton University Libraries Nancy Abashian is the Head of Reader Services and Resource Sharing at Binghamton University Libraries. Beginning her professional career at Binghamton in 2006, she completed her MLS in 2013 from the University at Buffalo. Resource sharing has played a central role in Nancy’s career, and has led her to working with the IDS Project. As a member, a mentor, and now the Mentor Coordinator for IDS, Nancy enjoys contributing to, learning from, and helping to build the resource-sharing community nearby and nationwide.

Jennifer Acker, Hudson Valley Community College Jennifer Acker is a Senior Clerk at Hudson Valley Community College. She has been working at Hudson Valley Community College for 21 years and 16 of those years have been in Interlibrary Loan. Jennifer is currently the IDS Project’s Regional User Group Coordinator and a mentor. She is a member of the Committee on Resource Sharing, which advises the Capital District Library Council on activities that relate to its resource-sharing programs and services. In the spring of 2016, Jennifer was awarded the State University of New York Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Classified Service.

Tom Delaney, RAPID Tom Delaney received his MLIS from Syracuse University. He was the Head of Interlibrary Loan at Colorado State University and at Columbia University. In 2006 he returned to Rapid as Director of Outreach and Customer Support. Among his duties he travels to ILL conferences frequently and makes presentations about Rapid and also about Colorado State University’s massive flood recovery project from 1997 to 2002. He also provides outreach and support for Rapid libraries, with the goal of helping libraries to maximize their usage of Rapid. Tom’s projects include analytics and data analysis, evaluation of usage trends, and training libraries to ensure that staff and management are fully engaged in sending their traffic to Rapid as the most cost-effective resource-sharing mechanism. From 1998 to 2003 he also copresented a series of ILL workshops designed to help library and ILL practitioners integrate automation in ILL and to decrease the manual labor required to process ILL and consequently reduce costs and patron turnaround time.Tom has authored several articles and coauthored the 2004 book Assessing ILL/DD Services: New Cost-Effective Alternatives, with Mary Jackson and Bruce Kingma. He has also authored and coauthored several articles, including articles with Mike Richins and Jane Smith.

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Nora Dethloff, University of Houston Libraries Nora Dethloff, MFA, MLIS, is the Assistant Head of Information and Access Services at the University of Houston’s M.D. Anderson Library, where she oversees ILL, Course Reserves, and Shelving Services. Her research interests include user experience design, process improvement, and copyright in libraries. She has presented at state, regional, and national conferences, including Northwest ILL, the ILLiad Conference, and ALA Annual. Her work has been published in the Journal of Access Services, New Library World, and the Journal of Interlibrary Loan, Document Delivery & Electronic Reserve. She has been active and held leadership roles in ALA’s RUSA STARS, the Greater Western Library Alliance, and the Texas Library Association. She is passionate about resource sharing, Fair Use, and making things work well. In her spare time she feeds and cares for two daughters, a dog, and an English professor.

Katherine E. DeVet, Texas Tech University Libraries Katherine E. (Katie) DeVet is the Library Associate for Document Delivery at Texas Tech University. As a PhD candidate in the Fine Arts Doctoral Program at Texas Tech with a field of specialization in Music and concentration in Music Composition, her academic journey has given her unexpected opportunities and she is currently looking to take the interdisciplinary experiences gained into academic librarianship. Katie uses her diverse experiences to help colleagues and future scholars in all disciplines find the resources they need for their research and use the technology available to assist with interdisciplinary collaboration across the world. Within the department she works to guide Document Delivery staff and student assistants to give excellent service to all patrons, both at Texas Tech and abroad, and is constantly looking for ways to strengthen the team.

Bill Jones, IDS Project Bill Jones is the IDS Project Creative Technologist at SUNY Geneseo Milne Library and serves as the SUNYLA President, the SUNYLA IDS Project Liaison, the ALA RUSA STARS Webmaster, and is a member of the RUSA STARS Promotion and Outreach Committee. Since 2010, Bill has contributed to the IDS Project through web development, software development, research, publishing, training, hands-on support, marketing, and administration.

Kenny Ketner, Library Systems Programmer/Analyst, Montana State Library Kenny Ketner is the Information Products Lead at Montana State Library, where he manages a team of developers creating web-based services to access the geospatial datasets of the Montana Spatial Data Infrastructure (MSDI). Prior to that, he worked as the Software Development Manager

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for Texas Tech University Libraries, guiding a team of five developers in the creation of cutting-edge library technology. Kenny is the lead developer for Occam’s Reader, the first library-developed method for the interlibrary loan of eBooks. Kenny earned his Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of Chicago in 2003.

Micquel Little, Claremont Colleges Library Micquel Little is the Director of User Services and Resource Sharing at the Claremont Colleges Library in Southern California. After earning her BA and MLIS degrees from the University of Pittsburgh, Micquel became involved in resource sharing and the IDS Project in 2010 as the first Regional User Group Coordinator. Micquel’s interests have grown into organization-wide discussions regarding resource sharing’s leading role in the future of academic libraries after earning her MBA from St. John Fisher College in 2014. She collaboratively founded and continues to coordinate the IDS Project’s Online Learning Institute, which strives to combine partnerships from across the country to provide community-based resourcesharing training in an online environment and has just received the Rethinking Resource Sharing Innovation Award on behalf of the IDS Project at ALA Annual 2016. Micquel loves collaborating with her colleagues and talking about how awesome resource sharing truly is to anyone who will listen.

Scott Luker, Texas Tech University Libraries Scott Luker is a software architect/programmer at Texas Tech University Libraries. He has developed software and web applications for document delivery, circulation, and digital collections. In addition to programming he has professional experience in server and database administration, learning management systems, and graphic design. His ­supplemental talents include music composition and audio/video production. Scott is proficient in PHP, ASP.NET, C#, SQL, and Python. His current interests include ­augmented reality, “big data” projects, and media-based solutions. Scott earned a Bachelor of Arts from Texas Tech University.

Claire MacKeigan, Relais International Clare MacKeigan is Chief Operating Officer and one of the owners of Relais International, a company dedicated to the development of solutions to support ILL, resource sharing, and document delivery. Clare has been involved with Relais since its inception in 1996. Prior to this Clare worked at CISTI for 17 years in various roles, including 10 years as Assistant Manager/Head Systems for Document Delivery. Clare is a member of the IFLA Document Delivery and Resource Sharing standing committee as well as being an editor for the new ISO 18626 standard for ILL transactions.

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Weston Mauldin, Texas Tech University Libraries Weston Mauldin is a software developer for the Texas Tech University Library. He received his Bachelor’s and Master’s in Computer Science from Texas Tech. His main research interest is machine learning. He became a Super Backer on Kickstarter just from backing tabletop games. He believes that corgis are the key to a long and happy life.

Conni Marcum, Texas Tech University Libraries Conni Kitten Marcum is the Circulation library associate. She served as the Document Delivery library associate from Dec. 2005 until Apr. 2014. She earned a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science from the University of North Texas in 2009.

Beth Posner, The Graduate Center, CUNY Beth Posner is the Head of Library Resource Sharing at The Graduate Center, CUNY. She is also an active IDS member, an IDS mentor, and runs the IDS Online Mentor Institute. She serves on the Steering Committee of the Rethinking Resource Sharing Initiative and as Chair of the Policies Committee of ALA RUSA STARS. She also writes about the development of library information and resource sharing, and has recently edited Library Information and Resource Sharing: Transforming Services and Collections, a book about how interlibrary loan services work with all other library functions.

Shannon Pritting, SUNY Polytechnic Institute Shannon Pritting is currently the Library Director at SUNY Polytechnic Institute. Before joining SUNY Poly in 2015, he was Access and Resource Sharing Librarian at Syracuse University. He has also held instruction and public services positions at SUNY Oswego and Cayuga Community College. Shannon has been heavily involved in the creation and development of IDS Logic, Lending Availability Service, and Article Gateway, and has worked to encourage different models of resource access across a variety of libraries in New York State.

Mike Richins, RAPID Mike Richins has over 15 years of experience in library resource sharing. Prior to joining the RapidILL team in 2010 he was the Interlibrary Loan Lending Supervisor at Colorado State University Libraries. Mike is currently the Coordinator of Customer Support and System Development for RapidILL, and works with libraries on Rapid setup, training, workflow, and support. He also conducts RapidILL workshops and promotes the service through conference presentations and webinars. Mike’s love of resource sharing largely revolves around customizing and automating

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both borrowing and lending workflows. He was involved in the development of the RapidX service, which functions as an ­intermediary delivery service between Rapid libraries that do not use the same delivery protocol and which facilitate automated document delivery to patrons. More recently, Mike has been working to promote RapidR (Returnables), a service for libraries interested in quick and efficient sharing of books and other returnables. Outside of librarianship, Mike enjoys spending time with his family, which consists of his lovely wife Amanda and two beautiful daughters (Emerson and Vivian). Traveling, backpacking, swimming, bike riding, and reading are some of his favorite activities. Mike is also a painter, printmaker, draftsman, and photographer; his work is found in numerous public and private collections. Mike is known to pick up a guitar from time to time, and he writes and records his own compositions.

Dr. Silvana Mangiaracina, National Research Council Bologna Research Area Library Silvana Mangiaracina has a degree in Mathematics and has been researcher at the Italian National Research Council (CNR) since 1989. She has been actively involved for more than 25 years in the development and exploitation of ICT technologies to create innovative information services for a scientific research community and for libraries. She has directed Italian national projects on library resource sharing and open access of scientific ­publications. Since 1997 she has been the Head of the CNR Bologna Research Library. She is the creator and project manager of NILDE, a nationwide service for resource sharing, used by about a 1000 Italian research, university, and public libraries and 50,000 of their end users. She has been a member of scientific committees in Italy and international organizations, such as the NILDE Library Committee (2001 to present), the Italian IDEM (IDEntity Management for service access) Federation Technical-Scientific Committee (2007–2011), the ISSN International Board of Directors (2011–2014), the IFLA Standing Committee on Document Delivery and Resource Sharing (2013 to present), and the AIB Observatory on Copyright and Open Access (2015 to present).

Jane Smith, RAPID Jane Smith holds an MA in Education Technology and has served as the Head of Interlibrary Loan at Colorado State University and the University of Northern Colorado. Jane has been involved with resource sharing for over 25 years. She was one of the initial Rapid team members and has been involved with Rapid for 15 years. Jane retired in 2011 and returned parttime to the Rapid team as the Coordinator, RapidILL. Her primary duties entail Rapid marketing, training, and working to insure that Rapid participants get the most from their Rapid experiences. Jane has traveled

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widely to make speeches and presentations on resource sharing and on Rapid, including presentations at the ILDS Conferences in Alberta (1996) and Singapore (2007). She has authored and coauthored numerous articles, conference proceedings, and book chapters on the topics of resource sharing and Rapid. Jane also enjoys traveling with her husband to various places around the globe, and spends time with her family in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.

Mark Sullivan, IDS Project Mark Sullivan is the Executive Director of the IDS Project and helped to create the IDS Project in 2004 with Ed Rivenburgh as they traveled throughout New York State sharing the benefits of cooperative optimization, innovation, and mentoring. Mark developed many of the original tools used by IDS Project libraries and other libraries across the country. Some of his work includes ALIAS, a highly effective article request system for IDS Project libraries that offers all libraries cooperative licensing data instrumental in making resources available, and the Getting It System Toolkit applications. Mark earned a BS in Biology from Cornell University, a Juris Doctor from Vermont Law School, and an MLS from the University at Buffalo.

Noho ora mai rā, nā Sue Thompson, University of Canterbury Thompson is the Assistant Librarian in charge of Interloans for the University of Canterbury, Central Library in Christchurch New Zealand. The University of Canterbury is a participant in the latest version of VDX which is hosted by OCLC.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to acknowledge the Texas Tech University Libraries Document Delivery staff: Katie, Brenna, Chisholm, Jakob, Jessie, and Rea for their dedication, tenacity, hard work, for keeping me on my toes, and not letting us settle for anything less than the best. I also want to thank Dean Gerlich, Sheila Hoover, and Susan Hidalgo for supporting both me in my time at Texas Tech and my research in the preparation for this book. Ryan Litsey

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INTRODUCTION: INTERLIBRARY LOAN AND THE TRANSITION TO RESOURCE SHARING The words we use to describe the functions of the library have importance both as a descriptive of the function of a service and as a conceptualization of the ideas that are involved in a process. In a search of the term Resource Sharing in library databases there is limited use of the term prior to the year 2000. After the year 2000 we see an increase in the use of the term. While searching results cannot serve as an exhaustive analysis, it does demonstrate a shift in conceptualization of interlibrary loan process. This change in conceptualization demonstrates a shift in how interlibrary loan is conceived as well as executed. Also, considering that Resource Sharing is a significantly more expansive term, there is a strong argument for the idea that what patrons expect from interlibrary loan operations, in terms of what they are able to supply to the patron, has expanded as well.What patron expectations have expanded to include and how that process has happened is the main focus of the book. It is the hope that through this research there is a way to chart a theoretical and conceptual framework for understanding the nature and function of a resource-sharing unit in the modern academic library. This includes adapting existing interlibrary loan operations or creating new processes to meet the needs of resource sharing now and in the future. Libraries have evolved beyond traditional notions of interlibrary loan. Interlibrary loan departments must contend with a variety of forces that have changed patron perceptions of what to expect from a library. The changing of expectations and perceptions are what forms the central factor for the evolution of an interlibrary loan department into a resource-sharing department. The changing of patron expectations can be encapsulated in a new concept of how to understand the library. This concept is the “library as place.” The library as place is defined best in an article by Geoffrey Freeman (2005). Freeman writes, Upon entering the library, the student becomes part of a larger community—a community that endows one with a greater sense of self and higher purpose. Students inform us that they want their library to “feel bigger than they are.” They want to be part of the richness of the tradition of scholarship as well as its expectation of the future. They want to experience a sense of inspiration. Freeman (2005, p. 6)

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The above quote by Freeman (2005) was taken from a report called Library As Place: Rethinking Roles, Rethinking Space prepared for the Council on Library and Information Resources. The author’s quote underlies a fundamental shift within libraries. The idea that the library can have a place in the cultural fabric of the student changes how and where the library can impact the university. The much heralded decline of the academic library has not manifested. The reason for this is something that Freeman (2005) touches on. There may be more to the modern library experience than a collection of books. The library of today may serve as more of a cultural space than a place to find books.This shift has been spurred on by the development of new technologies—technology which has transformed the library from a warehouse of books into a cultural space.The idea of a library as a cultural space is at the heart of the concept of library as place. Jackson and Hahn (2011) using techniques from psychology to assess the library, rather than traditional commercial assessment techniques also discovered the concept of the library as place. They write, Circulation statistics do not measure these benefits; students may not actually use the books on the shelves, but they “sanctify” the books—being around the books makes them feel more scholarly and connected to the institution’s educational mission. Jackson and Hahn (2011, p. 436)

Viewing the library as a holy place adds more complexity to how the contemporary library patron interacts with the library. The authors argued that patrons have a view of the library that is not encapsulated in traditional metrics of assessment. They continue, “In part to fend off claims that the library will soon be irrelevant as collections are digitized and user access is increasingly remote, the idea of library as place having independent merits is garnering support” (Jackson and Hahn, 2011, p. 430). This concept is a fundamental shift and has a large impact in how library services are delivered, measured, and modified. If the patron has an ethereal connection to the library, then the resources provided will necessarily be open to evolution. For example, a patron feels the need to come to the library so that they can be a part of the academic integrity of the university. This feeling has little to do with what is actually available as well as the resources they need to accomplish their individual academic mission. So there is a bifurcation within the psyche. On the one hand the patron sees the academic library as almost a holy shrine that must be experienced, on the other there is a need for resources to accomplish their academic goals. If the library is a space where resources are found, it is also an idea that the traditional concepts of what a

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library can supply are abandoned for the imagination of the patron and what a library should be. This is a subtle distinction that has a major impact. The distinction that the library is a conceptual cultural space where students can be connected to their academic past. If that is true than what the students associate with the resources the library can provide is quite possibly up to the limits of their imagination. We can see this concept starting to take shape in the proliferation of services offered by the academic library. The concept of the library has been separated in the minds of the patron from the collection of the books on the shelf. It has become an idea, and ideas can be manipulated and reshaped with ease. The patron is then driven by technology to remove many of the physical barriers to library usage, for example, the need to access a physical book, the library becomes more of an idea. If the library is an idea, then the needs and wants of the patron exponentially expand. No longer can the library be merely about books; it must be something more. If this is true, then interlibrary loan especially can no longer be merely putting a book in a box and shipping it. We have to think of the process now as resource sharing and not interlibrary loan. Imagine for a moment the library patron of the near future. What types of technology and expectations might this person bring to his or her library experience? We can likely imagine that this person will have some type of Internet-connected device; through this device he or she will be able to manage much of his or her daily business, everything from interactions with friends to the ability to fulfill his or her information needs. What else might he or she expect from the library. In an era when the time between need/ want and delivery is becoming more and more compressed, might this person expect quick delivery of items he or she requests? With that, we can also add the expectations that needs/wants can be a fluid and unique to individuals themselves. Even now we can use the Internet to order and acquire a near limitless variety of different items, everything from groceries, to books, to electronic media.With these types of expectations in mind, we can no longer view interlibrary loan as merely the shipping of books back and forth. To understand what this paradigm shift is and how it came about it is interesting to begin at the beginning, with a brief historical foray into how interlibrary loan officially began, at least in the United States of America.

INTERLIBRARY LOAN Interlibrary loan has officially been a process since 1858 when a librarian at UC Berkeley sought to gain access to materials outside of the UC Berkeley

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campus. However, it is easy to imagine the Interlibrary Loan has as a process been around much longer than that. Can we imagine the when the earliest monks who transcribed a copy of a religious text and took that copy to another abbey were not themselves interlibrary loan patrons. As the ability to reproduce books becomes a faster and more efficient process libraries quickly became incapable of being able to “own it all.” Thus the need for Interlibrary Loan develops as a system in earnest. From those first official requests between Berkeley and the California State Library to the development of the Ohio College Library Center, which today is more commonly known as the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), Interlibrary Loan has been a staple function within libraries in general and academic libraries, especially. However, as libraries evolve, so do the means to which libraries are able to share books and items back and forth. No more is this evident in the transition between physical books being sent from libraries to articles and copies being sent. Once libraries moved beyond physical loans the understanding of interlibrary loan must change as well. For example, it is clear to see how as catalogs became more and more open to access from those outside a given institution, the discovery of items not owned becomes easier. Also, as catalogs and databases emerged the ability to instantaneously request access seamlessly and without library intervention became easy for patrons to initiate. This leads to an increase in the types of items that another patron and a different library may want to utilize, and thus, the rise of journal article sharing as the main type of item that is requestable through interlibrary loan. Once articles and copies are shared through interlibrary loan, the process becomes less interlibrary loan and more interlibrary own since the requesting party now has a permanent copy of the item.This shift in understanding starts a long ripple effect that changes how libraries think of interlibrary loan. We see a similar effect again with the rise of the electronic journal articles. If a university has access to an item electronically and the capability to transmit that electronic item across great distances very quickly that also has an effect. Now contracts around the journals have to be structured to allow sharing, copyright guidelines must be developed and refined to allow more clarity about what a library can and cannot do with it electronic content. The ability to process items electronically continues to shape the interlibrary loan world. It causes the development of consortial sharing networks. Groups that work together to supply items they do not own to libraries that have a similar need often within a certain geographic area. At the beginning of 2000s we have what resembles interlibrary loan of today, a system of sharing between libraries, and a system

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that transmits and receives items electronically as well as physically. A system, that has some degree of discovery integration and automated processing. This simple description largely covers most of what interlibrary loan does in the contemporary library and is a dramatic shift in expectations and service levels than traditional interlibrary loan. The literature that has been written about interlibrary loan over the last few decades can help chart the change in perspective. Beginning in the late 1990s with the iconic book written by one of the forward thinkers in Interlibrary Loan Virginia Boucher. Her book entitled Interlibrary Loan Practices Handbook (1997) seeks to lay out the policies, workflows, and procedures a newly minted interlibrary loan librarian could follow to create a department and a system that coincided with all the necessary codes, guidelines, and best practices. The first chapter is entitled Instructions for Borrowing Libraries.This chapter serves to instruct a borrowing library in the appropriate methodology of the borrowing process of interlibrary loan. The chapter goes into great detail about the policy procedures, even the supplies necessary to accomplish the task. It is important to highlight in Chapter 1 the description of the process as one that is largely based on paper processing, a concept we will discuss later. Chapter 2 is constructed much the same way, except that the second chapter is the process and procedures for the lending half of the process. Once the basic outline of the process is discussed, the author then takes time to introduce some of the more nuanced issues in interlibrary loan. Some of these nuances include the role of copyright in interlibrary loan, and the lending and borrowing of thesis and dissertations. She closes with two final chapters that discuss operations outside of a given university in the form of international interlibrary loan and the consortial cooperation that occurs in interlibrary loan. The final chapter closes with a discussion of the management of interlibrary loan. In the final section of that chapter she describes the future of interlibrary loan as one that never stands still. She briefly introduces OCLC as a group that is looking forward. She closes the book with six problems that must be solved. First, putting the patron first; second, learning to be an excellent teacher for patrons; third, defending the patron’s right to confidentiality; fourth, working with evolving technology to create better opportunity; fifth, knowing copyright law; and sixth, keeping up with a rapidly changing field. It is these last six paradigms particularly number four and six, that will illustrate the importance for understanding how interlibrary loan has changed since the first publication of the book. In the coming chapters we will illustrate how interlibrary loan have evolved to a new paradigm, one that brings with this new

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challenges and new opportunities. While some of her thoughts are still poignant a few have changed and the technology that has developed for the management and practice of interlibrary loan has changed the way we can conceptualize and execute the process in fundamental ways, ways not anticipated in 1997. While Virginia Boucher’s (1997) book serves as a good primer there has been other books written on the subject. Gilmer (1994) provides another procedural overview of the Interlibrary Loan process. The author’s work goes into great detail on the variety of systems that are employed in interlibrary loan. Systems that can include organizations that a library can belong to, to help with sharing. Policies and procedures involved in sharing. The challenge, though, with this book is that it sees items as a strictly physical concept. Meaning that as technology has developed to free the library resources from the traditional physical space the procedures for interlibrary loan need to adapt. The author’s historical discussion is helpful, however, with the development of computerized networks in the author’s description of interlibrary loan is insufficient. Chang and Jackson (1996) offer a similar treatment concerning the mechanized physical processing of interlibrary loan requests.While it is true that the act of physically packaging a book and sending it to another library has not gone away.What has happened though is a noticeable decline in that type of processing. One thing that is discussed in the Chang and Jackson (1996) piece that is yet to be previously illuminated in the importance of management of ILL staff. In this case the different chapter authors provide a Total Quality Management overview of staff performance. While it is important to see a staff training perspective in analyzing the evolution of ILL, as was discussed previously in the “library as place” concept, having a management or business approach may be appropriate for staff but in thinking of the service it may be insufficient. Another interesting aspect of this piece as it applies to the evolution of interlibrary loan is a recognition of how ILL is being changed by the introduction of new technology. One chapter addresses this directly in a section on the impact of information technology. Also, anecdotally this is one of the first books that uses the terms Resource Sharing in the title, which is a departure from many of the other more procedural books written about interlibrary loan. Chang and Jackson (1996) are able to demonstrate the myriad of evolving pressures on the interlibrary loan process in their book. The primary focus is on management and new competencies, but what cannot be overlooked is the permeation of technology throughout the entire process.The impact of technology and direct access to the library systems by the library patron out of necessity

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creates a more customer service focused assessment of libraries, which in turn leads to new ways of looking at interlibrary loan. Weaver-Meyers et al. (1996) addresses interlibrary loan and the customer service aspect. The authors wrote their book during a time of the emergence of Total Quality Management as a method of assessing customer satisfaction. This also corresponds to the Chang and Jackson (1996) emphasis on Total Quality Management mentioned earlier. The closing chapter written by Brice G. Hobrock (1996) discusses the paradigm shift in interlibrary loan. The author attributes this shift as a result of the corporate influence on assessment and library organization. Hobrock (1996) also emphasizes the need for an increase in response time to users requests a process the author refers to as reengineering. For Hobrock (1996) the process of reengineering is a customer-focused process. As such it needs to focus externally on library customers. While this line of reasoning may have worked early on, contemporary technology users approach closer to a social network than a customer base. What is meant by that is the reengineering that Hobrock (1996) argues may already be gone. The born digital age students have always had access to technology and electronic forms of interaction. Therefore, the relationship between the student and the library is less like a customer relationship and more of a social or familial relationship. This is also evident in the earlier discussions of the library as place. If even in the age of declining physical collections the library has maintained a place in the cultural hearts and minds of academic library users, then there is a different relationship that is not a consumer model. The challenge, though, rests in reconciling the expectations of the users with the operations of the library.What is meant by this is even if the library operations function like a business, we cannot assess library interactions solely using business terminology.This is especially important when considering interlibrary loan operations, where we see the immediate connection with user expectation and library operations. Connecting library operations with consumer models of assessment is not new and it not necessarily a large departure from the daily operations of a library. There are two elements really at work in interlibrary loan operations that would lead to a more consumer base model. First, the general operational management of interlibrary loan offices do in large part function like a business. The supply and demand of the books the library patrons need. A more consumerist model of interlibrary loan is discussed in great detail in Palmour et al. (1972). In that book the authors go into extensive detail about the cost of interlibrary loan operations, especially the cost to fill a request. This title is not

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unique in that level of analysis. In fact, a cost analysis appears in almost all of the major works on interlibrary loan. The linkage between ILL and cost cannot be severed. As a service the cost to provide such a service will always be a question. The motivation for efficient cost expenditures though drives the need for innovation. It also is the driving force for better understanding patron wants and needs and as a metric for measuring performance. Jackson (1998) addresses the measurement of ILL operational performance. Much of the authors cost analysis centers on the balance between two ideas. The first is the time it takes to receive a request and second the cost involved with the supply of the item. The connection between these two aspects drive most of the measurements of success for interlibrary loan operations. The emphasis on measuring performance continues in the literature to this day. What is interesting though is there is a transition. As libraries get more and more integrated with new technologies and methods of engaging in interlibrary loan we see a gradual shift in the importance paid to financial analysis. For example, in Hilyer (2002) the discussion of measuring performance comes at the end of the book. Also, the author does not necessarily discuss cost.The author discusses the statistics of the processing of the requests as a means of measurement not necessarily the cost to do so. Following with the shift in understanding of cost, in the third edition of the Interlibrary Loan Practices Handbook, the discussion of costs includes a new topic, which is the relationship between borrowing and buying a book. In the most recent publication on interlibrary loan a book entitled Resource Sharing Today, the primary cost discussion centers not on supply but on borrow versus buy.This distinction is the localization of cost underlies the shifting understanding of interlibrary loan. Also the title of the book is Resource Sharing Today. The title illustrates the change in perspective when it comes to how interlibrary loan is conceptualized. In fact, this change in terminology is reflected in the title of another famous cost study article. The cost study of Lars Leon and Nancy Kress (2012) also demonstrates a very interesting shift that began in the later part of the 2010. That is a shift in terminology.While a shift in terminology may seem trivial, the contention is that this shift underlies a very dramatic paradigmatic change in how interlibrary loan is thought of and executed. Driven by technology and transformed by access, efficiency and new processes; interlibrary loan steadily became resource sharing. Which incidentally is the title of one of the more cited articles on interlibrary loan cost studies. The Leon and Kress (2012) piece called “Looking at Resource Sharing Costs.” This shift is terminology is important as we will see in the next section.

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RESOURCE SHARING As libraries in general begin to evolve and embrace the ever-increasing presence and use of technology the terms we have used in the past no longer apply. This is evident also in the literature surrounding interlibrary loan operations and management. Up until the early 2000s nearly all of the books written used the term interlibrary loan. These books as discussed earlier all follow a similar structure and argument. Then around the late 2000s we see a shift in the terminology. The word interlibrary loan begins to be replaced in the literature with the term Resource Sharing. In 2013 Marshall Breeding writing for Library Technology Reports, drafts a report on “Resource Sharing in Libraries: Concepts Products, Technologies and Trends.” There are several very interesting parts of this report. First, it is one of the first Resource Sharing pieces to go into greater detail about the technology involved in handling of requests. For example, there are sections on integrated resource-sharing systems, automation, and OpenURL. All of these technologies are what allow a high volume of requests to be processed seamlessly and quickly, with little human intervention. This report is one of the more recent and is also one of the most detailed in terms of technologies involved in the processing of interlibrary loan requests. It is no accident than that the term Resource Sharing is used in the title. The work itself demonstrates there is a paradigm shift in how interlibrary loan is thought of. At the crux of this shift is the use of technology and the role it plays in processing efficiency, which allows for a broader array of services to be offered. In 2014 one of the most recent books published on interlibrary loan also uses the phrase resource sharing, it is called Resource Sharing Today. Again we see the use of the term resource sharing. A one-time use could be coincidental but a second displays a normative pattern. The term for interlibrary loan is steadily shifting to resource sharing. The book by Corinne Nyquist (2014) demonstrates again the rise and importance technology has played in transforming interlibrary loan. There is even a chapter written by Beth Posner called “Rethinking Resource Sharing: The Future of Interlibrary Loans.” In it, Posner (2014) addresses a variety of new ways of thinking about resource sharing, many of which the role of technology and the changing user expectations plays a key part. It is the synthesis of these two events the continued development of technology and the effect it has on changing user expectations, that has changed the way in which future practitioners and students of resource sharing must examine the ecosystem of the process and plan for future developments.

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The books listed above are by no means to serve as an exhaustive list. It is merely presented to stimulate a different way of thinking about interlibrary loan and subsequently resource sharing. Driven by technology the perceptions and expectations of library users has fundamental and irrevocably changed. It is necessary for library professionals to recognize this change and begin to adapt our processes to account for the shifting expectations. Many authors have described the shifting values of library users but few provide recommendations for new modes of thinking. This book will seek to draw these lines of development and modes of organization. New lines of thinking about resource sharing rather than interlibrary loan. The phrase resource sharing is a paradigm shift. The term paradigm is often used to denote certain norms, values, or constants. The term is used here because it is important to distinguish between the traditional norms and values of interlibrary loan, with the new norms and values that are rapidly impacting libraries worldwide. The traditional norms and values of sharing, physically sending items, or electronically sending journal articles are under a scrutiny to change. This change is governed by the changing needs and attitudes of the library users. The change in paradigm also comes with a change in terminology. That subtle change is echoed in the emergence of an ALA committee as well. The committee is not called the Rethinking Interlibrary Loan Committee; it is called the Rethinking Resource Sharing Committee. It is this change of phrasing that gives further evidence to the paradigm shift that interlibrary loan is undergoing.The shift of interlibrary loan to resource sharing is at the crux of illustrating the change in attitudes, values, and workflow that must accompany an evolving patron user base. The term resource sharing marks a moment in time when the ways in which interlibrary loan operations and offices began to shift to accommodate a new type of user. Over the course of this book the reader will be able to understand, plan for, and adapt to the shift from interlibrary loan to resource sharing. The discussion begins with Chapter 1 and an analysis of the shift in how the workflow and practices of day-to-day operations in an interlibrary loan unit has changed. No longer can we view the workflow as a relationship between one library and a patron. The interlibrary loan units must learn to be able to provide high volume service. Many large academic libraries regularly receive 100,000 or more requests a year. That type of volume needs a recognition that the old workflow of personal relationships with each request can only serve to

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hinder the movement of the request and may actually result in the patron receiving a lower quality of care. This new way of looking at the workflow are illustrated in a discussion about logistical and supply-chain management. It is within this business type model that we can develop the strategies needed to handle high volume requests efficiently and effectively yet still provide quality customer service. While it may seem that this type of request management may not work with smaller libraries it is important to remember that regardless of the size of the library the expectations and capabilities of the user has changed. Furthermore, while small libraries may not need such robust mechanism they often interact with larger supplying libraries who could benefit from an understanding by the smaller library of supply-chain management. Supplychain management can give us new insights into how to view the operational business model of resource sharing and how to approach development of new ideas and concepts. Supply-chain management is the beginning of an understanding of resource sharing as it applies to day-to-day operations. Supply-chain resource sharing and management of staff functions and processes is a conceptually different model than interlibrary loan. Using the supply chain management as a framework there are variety of different methods one could use to examine the existing roles and responsibilities of the resource-sharing staff. Further, it is also opens the possibility of critical examination of how the staff may be structured and see if there are opportunities for improvement there. From the discussion of workflow analysis and management we move to Chapter 2. The reason for the discussion of staff function prior to the discussion of technology underscore the duality of the argument. Technology alters user expectations in such a way that only a well-organized resource-sharing unit will be equipped with the tools to address the emerging needs of the user. Chapter 2 begins with a discussion of the variety of technologies that have emerged in resource sharing in the last couple of years. The key to understanding in this section is to see how the resource-sharing communities have moved beyond simple consortial agreements. There is now an emphasis on increased interconnectedness. With that interconnectedness comes technological advances that help in speeding up discovery of needed items, designating libraries to receive and process requests, methods of supply, and a variety of other technological systems that help meet the needs of the new resource-sharing patron. From the discussion of the new technologies that are becoming more commonplace among resource-sharing

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units, we move to the more forward-thinking discussion in Chapter 3 about consortia. Chapter 3 is an analysis of how forward-thinking resource-sharing units can work within their consortia, to develop new methods of providing users resources anytime anywhere. Within this simple statement the resourcesharing unit applies different technologies to bring the capabilities and technology of the unit to the user. Chief among these is the technology that allows resource-sharing units to become more interconnected. The new types of consortial arrangements seek to not merely exchange information but rather create integrated resource-sharing networks. These networks have a catalog level of integration and can serve to process large volumes of requests quickly and efficiently. Some of the questions addressed the Chapter 3 include: How can we provide our users with the tools of a resourcesharing department at their fingertips? Are there methods in place to monitor and examine the exchange of items between libraries? We all know very well how our individual resource-sharing units’ function within our institutions, but how do they function in the larger consortia? It is with the development of new and forward-thinking technologies that we are able to get a better handle on current resource-sharing consortia arrangements. In Chapter 4 we take this discussion of resource sharing to the next level and examine how the changing types of resources have led to new technologies and new process that have not previously been examined. For example, what are libraries supposed to do with the rise of eBooks in the academic setting. Are there mechanisms in place for the resource sharing of eBooks? Aside from the eBooks the increased interconnectedness of the resource-sharing networks leaves libraries looking to gather more and more data about their relation to and within the larger resource-sharing networks. For example, how long does it take to get an item from point A to point B. Is there a particular methodology that we use that provides an efficient and effective delivery of an item? Also using the data we have gathered, are we able to use it to better understand resource sharing and the needs of our patrons? Ultimately, here is a very experimental understanding of the ability to use resource-sharing data to predict the items that patrons will want, since ultimately resource anytime anywhere may mean resources before a patron knows they want them. If the networks of resource sharing continue to become more and more interconnected this is the logical next step. This an experimental concept, but we can see how this can have a radical influence on resource sharing. By incorporating

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cutting-edge machine-learning applications with the already existing data models libraries collect, we can build transformative systems. Systems that not only respond to patrons ever changing needs, but seek to anticipate and adapt almost immediately. Finally, the book closes with a discussion of how libraries can distribute their knowledge and developments to the larger community. The final chapter, Chapter 5 seeks to inspire resource-sharing professionals and librarian alike to seek, discover, and share. As technology has changed, we have seen a push for more open access, both in terms of technology and research. This push can also be reflected in the development of new technology and new ideas. Librarians are a close-knit community, resource-sharing professionals especially. Sharing what we learn with each other is the core of Chapter 5. Much of what is discussed in Chapter 4 are technological developments from a specific place, Texas Tech University. That is not to highlight the particular developments of Texas Tech, but rather to illustrate how new technologies and new ideas can be developed in libraries. To provide a model for how librarians can do this at their institutions. Chapter 5 seeks to build on that discussion and demonstrate how libraries can take that next step from development to deployment within the resource-sharing community. Chapter 5 is the closing part that answers the question: I developed this new widget, what do I do next? It is the hope with this book that it can provide inspiration for librarians to take those tentative first steps and work to transform the resource-sharing community. One that is increasingly closer and closer because of new methods of communication. This books also seeks to illustrate that changes in terminology reflects a larger change in concept and process. In the chapters to come it will be evident that interlibrary loan is no longer the small office in the basement of the library, but it is, in many respects, as Tom Bruno (2013, p. 58) wrote, “As colleges and university libraries turn to more cooperative strategies for meeting the research needs of their faculty, students and staff, the resource sharing endeavor that began with the Alexandrians finds itself at the vanguard of librarianship.” Tom’s quote has some very romantic language but it also points to a key argument with this book: technology changes how the library user thinks about the library and the role of resource sharing. Resource sharing as a library service has not only emerged from the shadows to serve as a vanguard of library services, but it has also evolved to serve new needs and previously unknown information requests.

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REFERENCES Boucher, V., 1997. Interlibrary Loan Practices Handbook. American Library Association, Chicago. Breeding, M., 2013. Resource Sharing in Libraries: Concepts, Products, Technologies, and Trends. Library Technology Reports 49 (1). Bruno, T., 2013. Interlibrary loan and document delivery. In: Dawes, T.A., Krasulski, M.J. (Eds.), Twenty First Century Access Services: On the Front Line of Academic Librarianship. Association of College and Research Libraries, Chicago, IL, pp. 43–63. Chang, A., Jackson, M.E., 1996. Managing Resource Sharing in the Electronic Age. AMS Press, New York. Freeman, G.T., 2005. Library as Place: Rethinking Roles, Rethinking Space. Council on Library and Information Resources, Washington, DC. https://www.clir.org/pubs/ reports/pub129/pub129.pdf. Gilmer, L.C., 1994. Interlibrary Loan: Theory and Management. Libraries Unlimited, Englewood, CO. Hilyer, L.A., 2002. Interlibrary Loan and Document Delivery in the Larger Academic Library: A Guide for University, Research, and Larger Public Libraries. Haworth Information Press, Binghamton, NY. Hobrock, B., 1996. A manager’s viewpoint: opportunities for radical paradigm shifts. In: Weaver-Meyers, P., Stolt, W.A., Fong, Y.S. (Eds.), Interlibrary Loan/document Delivery and Customer Satisfaction: Strategies for Redesigning Services. Haworth Press, New York, pp. 167–188. Jackson, M.E., 1998. Measuring the Performance of Interlibrary Loan Operations in North American Research and College Libraries. Association of Research Libraries, Washington, DC. Jackson, H.L., Hahn, T.B., 2011. Serving higher education’s highest goals: assessment of the academic library as place. College & Research Libraries 72 (5), 428–442. Leon, L., Kress, N., 2012. Looking at resource sharing costs. Interlending & Document Supply 40 (2), 81–87. Nyquist, C., 2014. Resource sharing today: a practical guide to interlibrary loan, consortial circulation, and global cooperation. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham. Palmour,V.E., Bryant, E.C., Caldwell, N.W., Gray, L.M., 1972. A Study of the Characteristics, Costs, and Magnitude of Interlibrary Loans in Academic Libraries. Greenwood Pub, Westport, CT. Posner, B., 2014. Rethinking library resource sharing: the future of interlibrary loans. In: Nyquist, C. (Ed.), Resource Sharing Today: A Practical Guide to Interlibrary Loan, Consortial Circulation, and Global Cooperation. Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham. Weaver-Meyers, P., Stolt, W.A., Fong,Y.S., 1996. Interlibrary Loan/Document Delivery and Customer Satisfaction: Strategies for Redesigning Services. Haworth Press, New York.

CHAPTER 1

The Changing Roles of ILL Staff, Supply-Chain Management OVERVIEW Resource sharing has evolved over the past few decades into a new and almost entirely different system.The evolution has been due in large part to the influence of technology in changing student perceptions and interactions with the academic library.Technology has also opened up areas of opportunity for organizational and methodological changes. It is these organizational changes that serve as the crux of how we can adapt the existing interlibrary loan departments to serve the evolving resource-sharing needs of the modern library patron. In an era where patrons are able to discover, access, and request items in a seamless instant the necessity of resource-sharing units to respond to such pressures quickly and efficiently becomes paramount, and it is this process that begins to transform interlibrary loan units into resource-sharing units. In this changing climate it is helpful to construct an overarching methodology by which we can view the newly transformed resource-sharing units. No longer can we consider them as solely part of the library.We must view them as part of a large supplychain system.This supply chain is the process that we use to get items we do not own and supply items to libraries that need our stuff. Thinking about interlibrary loan in this way can provide the newly evolved resource sharing into a methodological framework for understanding and confronting the changing landscape. If we choose to look at resource sharing in this manner it is important then to examine what is meant by supply-chain management. Supplychain management is a concept borrowed from the business world. Simply put, it allows us to look at the world of resource sharing as a system, and within this system there are areas of inefficiency and areas of waste. It also helps us to conceptualize where we can improve, where we have little control and must therefore plan accordingly. It also allows us the tools to raise our heads up so to speak and examine the larger national and international systems at work in resource sharing. Much of interlibrary loan is often about the singular library: how the process is handled at your institution. This can no longer be the focus. We as resource-sharing professionals must take in the large landscape. How do the items we send to another school get there? How are they packaged? How do Resources Anytime, Anywhere ISBN 978-0-08-101989-4 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-101989-4.00001-8

Copyright © 2017 Ryan Litsey. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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we communicate our process to other institutions? Looking at the broader supply-chain forces the resource-sharing professional must consider the areas in which he or she may be bogging down the larger process. The question then remains: What is supply-chain management and how can it be applied to resource sharing/interlibrary loan?

SUPPLY-CHAIN MANAGEMENT AND INTERLIBRARY LOAN Interlibrary Loan has always been a crucial part of the academic library. It is a system designed to provide the researcher with materials his or her home library may not possess but are critical for their research.The research needs place a premium on getting the items in an efficient and effective manner. The evolution of interlibrary loan has centered on this concept of efficiency and effectiveness. Technology has provided a solution to many of the issues but as technology improves we must continue to find ways of providing efficient and effective service. We must look to other industries that can provide a model of how we can improve what we do. Improving and adapting to new patron expectations is how resource-sharing professionals can illustrate to patrons why resource sharing continues to be a valued and necessary service. Unfortunately, while technological innovation is the impetus, it is not enough we must begin to look elsewhere. The reason resource-sharing units must look elsewhere centers on the notion that while technology may change a great many things, the human element will remain, so it is necessary to learn how to match the human elements with the evolving needs of the patron. One concept that resource-sharing professionals and managers can look to is a type of management those of us in interlibrary loan may have been doing for some time and have never realized. These types of industry managers are called logisticians and they focus on supply-chain management and logistics. It is here where those of us in resource sharing can learn new models of delivery and service that can help keep us working to serve the patrons for years to come. At first glance, some might ask: What does supply-chain management have to do with resource sharing/interlibrary loan? They may also ask: We are a library funded by public funds or student fees, what could we possibly learn from a for-profit business model? The answer to these questions is at the heart of how we can look to improve the interlibrary loan service in the years to come. Before we address these questions, though, we must first begin to try and understand supply-chain management. Jay Forrester (1958, p. 37) points out,

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Management is on the verge of a major breakthrough in understanding how industrial company success depends on the interaction between the flows of information, materials, money, manpower, and capital equipment. The way these five flow systems interlock to amplify one another and to cause change and fluctuation will form a basis for anticipating the effects of decisions, policies, organizational forms, and investment choices.

His quote marks the beginning of a theory in a new type of business model, one that begins to argue that the success of a company depends on the interaction between a variety of systems and processes. He further argues that for the future executive to be successful he must begin to understand the conceptual models of his/her business. Forrester (1958, p. 38) continues further: The task of management is to interrelate the flows of information, materials, manpower, money, and capital equipment so as to achieve a higher standard of living, stability of employment, profit to the owners, and rewards appropriate to the success of the managers.

Forrester is arguing for a new model of management, one that sees a manager as an assembler of many different types of information. He is concerned that for too long business schools have been compartmentalized or siloed into a variety of unique tasks. His argument though is what underlies these “unique” tasks are a series of behaviors, and if these behaviors can be understood the manager can create a more holistic understanding of management and business functions. After looking at Forrester, one might ask, don’t libraries do that already? We do; we often examine the processes we currently undertake for their successes or failures. We adapt other successful practices from different libraries as our own. We understand the needs of the patron (customer). However, what we fail to do and, this is primarily within interlibrary loan, we fail to see how we as a single unit interrelate to other ILL units as a functioning entity of a larger information supply system. This concept removes the academic library in particular from an individual focus to a larger conceptualization that takes into account the interrelationship between libraries. As we begin to unravel this new concept of the interrelationship between libraries, Forrester (1958) can give us some guiding principles. He argues that there have been certain advances in recent years, i.e., 1958, that give us new tools we must use. Those tools are Data Processing, Strategic thinking, Feedback Control, and Simulation. Using these new tools, we can analyze a system to understand the interrelationship between the different parts. To analyze a system, Forrester (1958) argues that he must know three parts those parts are: organizational structure, delays in decisions, or actions

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and policies. For now, we will note this process for later analysis and application but there have been other important contributions in understanding supply-chain management that we must address. Supply-chain management can also be understood as a co-evolution of business practices. Bechtel and Jayaram (1997, p. 15) argue that supply-chain management can be understood as “the interconnection of key processes within firms and between firms.” Supply-chain management for Bechtel and Jayaram (1997) is not necessarily about logistics but more about the interrelationship between the consumers and the competitors that allows business to co-evolve around a certain product. Adding in the term logistics to this argument brings up an important caveat. Supply-chain management is not the study of logistics. Supply-chain management may have arisen out of the study of logistics but is it not logistics itself. Supply-chain management is an understanding of the relationship between processes. Logistics is the study of the movement and processes involved in the movement of items. It is important, though, to understand how the two different ideas can inform one another to provide us a better understanding of supply-chain management. Logistics is defined by the Council of Logistics Management in an article entitled Supply Chain Management: More than a New Name for Logistics by Cooper et al. (1997, p. 1) as The process of planning, implementing, and controlling the efficient, cost-effective flow and storage of raw materials, in process inventory, finished goods, and related information flow from point of origin to point of consumption for the purpose of confirming customer requirements.

This quote is very interesting and can help give us some perspective on two very complex topics as we move forward in our understanding of supply-chain management. First logistics by this definition is merely the monitoring and processing of goods. In library terms we practice a type of logistics every day. One type of logistics for a library is in the acquiring and processing of books which for us are the final goods for our consumers the patrons. Logistics then is more about the movement of goods from what is known as downstream facilities to upstream customers. Logistics analyzes the efficient movement of items and looks to create the best processes possible. While this type of business analysis would be very helpful in gaining a better understanding of how interlibrary loan items move about the building and are processed for delivery. The downside is that logistics does not take into account the whole process. Logistics only looks at the movement of physical items. It is only by taking into account the whole process can we better understand

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how supply-chain management can give us a new perspective in interlibrary loan and libraries in general. So what is the difference? Supply-chain management is a holistic analysis of an entire process, not merely examining the movement of items. Supply-chain management seeks to understand, for example, how the customer experience can impact the supply of good from the warehouse to how the delivery of items can affect the desire of a customer to use your service again. If we try to examine this from an interlibrary loan standpoint, logistics would be the monitoring and analysis of how books are pulled from the shelf boxed and shipped. Supply-chain analysis would take into account the request form the patron uses, the imported data from OCLC, the routing rules used to govern and sort items, the staff training, and expertise, the type of boxes used and the speed of delivery. Supply-chain management creates a more comprehensive analysis that allows the ILL manager to look at the system as a whole and make adaptations and evolutions as necessary. What is also important with this example is that we cannot overlook the library or patron receiving the item and the behavior associated with that. The delivery location and processes are also part of the supply chain and can have an impact. It is expanding the analysis beyond the boundaries of the individual library where the greatest impact on change and evolution of the interlibrary loan process can be felt. It is important to consider another aspect of the supply chain that has yet to be discussed. As James Ayers (2001, p. 5) describes in the book Handbook of Supply Chain Management The supply chain is not limited in terms of flow direction. Many consider supply chains only in terms of flow from suppliers to end users. For the physical processes, this is largely true. But supply chain design cannot ignore backward flows for product returns, rebates, incentive payments, and so forth. So much of what flows in the supply chain is two ways, including physical product, information, money and knowledge.

Ayers (2001) points out a very important idea as we move forward in our analysis. We cannot view the interlibrary loan supply chain as something that is completed merely when the book returns from the borrowing library or when the scan is electronically delivered. There are other things that we can learn and analyze even after the logistical process of delivery is completed, that can help build a better supply chain and thus help build a better interlibrary loan network.The implication is that even after the book is logistically delivered there are still opportunities for supply-chain management. Especially as departments evolve into resource sharing.The relationship does not end with delivery, there is assessment and analysis that must be undertaken.

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SIX PARADIGMS OF A SUPPLY CHAIN Ayers (2001) in his book also gives us a basic framework that we can use to begin to better understand the different moving pieces that make up ­supply-chain management. Ayers (2001) argues that there are six basic paradigms that form the common mindset of supply-chain management. Those six paradigms include, first, functional; in this paradigm companies are a collection of individual departments. Performance is centered on cost and productivity. As Ayers (2001, p. 10) describes, “In the functional organization, strong department heads sponsor change projects. ‘Cross Talk’ among departments is minimal. Information systems also center on the needs of the departments.” Many of us can imagine that the average academic library is similar to this description: individual units performing tasks they are individually responsible for. For example, interlibrary loan may ship the books but the way the books make it to the shelf is a different department and the conversation between the two regarding the books is limited. The second paradigm is procurement, this viewpoint is a move away from the functional as Ayers (2001) describes and starts to add in the supply aspect of supply chain.As Ayers (2001, p. 10) writes,“This viewpoint gave rise to the ‘supply’ in ‘supply chain’. In many product-making organizations today, the cost of material is the largest cost component.” The procurement viewpoint seeks to consolidate the purchase of materials used to develop products. The procurement model attempts to lower the cost of materials used in the production of widgets. Lower cost can be illustrated in how an academic library interlibrary loan department attempts to procure items, whether these are items from other libraries or in shipping items elsewhere. Interlibrary loan departments attempt to consolidate shipping into a few boxes as possible so as to save on the cost of materials involved in shipping. Procurement addresses the acquisition of items, whether those are books for patrons or supplies for the department. From procurement, Ayers (2001) moves to the third paradigm. The third paradigm is defined as logistics. Logistics can be loosely understood as the investigation of the processes and procedures for moving objects from one place to the other. For Ayers (2001) the importance of logistics is concerned with the “outbound downstream side.” Essentially, the focus on logistics is one of paying attention to how goods and services are distributed to the marketplace. Special attention is placed on warehousing and automation of delivery. For us in the academic interlibrary loan world that can be things like customized print templates with automated return address labels, or special courier services, that reduce cost and allow a more precise delivery rather than

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the postal service.This is a downstream focus. From a supply-chain perspective, we are missing a large portion of the arrival of goods and services to the appointed warehouses.The fourth paradigm is that of information. The information paradigm “looks to improve the links between the communication between the company and the supply chain” (Ayers, 2001, p. 11). For Ayers (2001) the information paradigm is looking to gather essentially that: information. It is understood that the more information you have about the movements of goods and services the better you can design a process that can take advantage of inherent efficiencies. One of the barriers to this paradigm has been the lack of software to manage such communication.We have, however, seen an increase in this for the ILL unit. The primary use of interlibrary loan management software between most of the interlibrary loan departments has aided in increased communication and efficient delivery between libraries. The fifth paradigm is business process engineering. Business process engineering as Ayers (2001) describes is a “radical restructuring” of the business unit to make operations more efficient. This usually results from the introduction of a new technology or method that makes certain types of operations obsolete. Understanding how this paradigm works with interlibrary loan and the academic library. As technology has changed the ways in which students interact with the academic library, their expectations have evolved as well. This requires a radical restructuring of the academic library in particular.There are several departments in an academic library that exist today that were not there 10 years ago. As well as there may be less catalogers today than before since much of the cataloging can be done by imported records. There may be even interlibrary loan units that have less staff since the technology can handle much of the physical processing and management than in the past. Ayers (2001) is quick to point out, however, that the technology is the enabler of such a radical change not the initiator. The process improvement is the initiator the technology just ensures that the change is completed and sustained.The sixth and final paradigm is defined as strategic. The strategic paradigm is the most comprehensive and the focus of Ayers (2001) argument in his book.The strategic paradigm sees business developing a supply-chain strategy that takes into account the entire supply system and develops methods that can help them compete in the marketplace while looking at all aspects of the supply chain. It is this area where we as interlibrary loan units must not turn our attention to.We can see how in each of the previous examples interlibrary loan units have demonstrated different models of how that type of paradigm might work with the unit.Very few, if any, interlibrary loan units have developed a strategic mindset of supply-chain

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management and it is this mindset that can help all interlibrary loan departments develop a model of service that sustains us far into the future. Ayers argues that each of these six paradigms functions in a bit of a hierarchical pattern: the first paradigm being very narrow and the final strategic paradigm offering the broadest viewpoint. For now, let’s keep in mind the Ayers paradigms because we will return to them when we start to consider how to build a strategic supply chain of interlibrary loan management.

NETWORKED INFORMATION AND THE SUPPLY CHAIN There is a key aspect to understanding the supply chain that has yet to be discussed and it is critically important to understanding the creation of a supply-chain interlibrary loan based strategy. That is the idea of how networked information has changed the way in which we conceive of interlibrary loan. If we think of interlibrary loan when it was done on paper and maybe limited computer usage. The process was very much a point a to point b endeavor. As Kuglin and Rosenbaum (2001, p. 59) write in The Supply Chain Network at Internet Speed, “Before the technology explosion of the last five to seven years, supply chains moved product and information from suppliers to manufacturers to wholesale/retailers in defined steps. Today information moves independently of the product and flows at internet speed.” This concept has a profound effect when we start to consider a supply-chain strategy for interlibrary loan. Imagine the idea that the information about an interlibrary loan transaction can travel independently from a physical book or a scan.What is meant by this? Take, for example, a library that has recently received a returned book. The book is in the library and returned but the item is still listed as checked out in OCLC or is in a status of renewed via OCLC. The information or metadata of the book is functioning separately in the supply chain from the physical books itself. This is a brief example of the separation between the product and the information. The question we will address later is twofold. First, what is the best strategy to deal with this case, and second, does it really matter if the product and the information are separated in this matter?

SUPPLY-CHAIN MANAGEMENT AND RESOURCE-SHARING OPERATIONS Before we address these two questions it is important to couch the discussion in the paradigms discussed earlier and how they may apply to the interlibrary loan operations. Recall Ayers’s (2001) six paradigms: functional,

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procurement, logistics, information, business process engineering, and strategic. These paradigms can help lay the groundwork for a transformation in how interlibrary loan departments view and operate within the interlibrary loan world. These six paradigms and understanding what supply-chain management looks like can help to evolve our workflows and process from that of interlibrary loan into resource sharing. To understand this, it is important to build a theoretical framework for what such a system would look like and how the already existing workflows can fit within these six paradigms.

The functional paradigm The first paradigm if you recall is the functional paradigm. As mentioned earlier, the functional paradigm examines the communication between different units within the same company. The functional paradigm seeks to understand the functioning relationships between disparate parts of a system. In thinking of functions think the task unique to a section of the supply chain. In general terms, are there certain activities that only a specific group within a library may do? Are there activities that a number of groups within a library can accomplish simultaneously? The example used was the communication between the interlibrary loan unit and the circulation unit about who may be doing the check-in of the books. Since this is a function that can be done by multiple units, if communication between these units is poor, then mistakes will likely be made. Mistakes can lead to not only confusion but also an inefficient supply chain. For example, if the interlibrary loan unit is not handling the check-in of returned items in the integrated library system, then items may be lost during check-in. Mistakes in the supply chain will have a ripple effect down the supply chain that could likely result in a bill to the borrowing library, which will be disputed and eventually either paid erroneously or the item is found after a search of the stacks by a paid employee. You can see how the error cascaded through the supply chain and multiplied the amount of work involved in solving a problem. The second paradigm of the procurement can also be demonstrated in existing interlibrary loan processes.

The procurement paradigm Procurement for Ayers (2001) is a consolidation of the methods to purchase items. This is a bit abstract but we can see it play out in the interlibrary loan units. For example, many libraries endeavor to consolidate all

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of the technology used for making and processing requests into a single source. For example, many units will integrate RAPID into ILLiad, they may also look to use Z39.50 or even an add-on to integrate searching into ILLiad. This is what is meant by the paradigm of procurement. Efficient interlibrary loan units should seek to monopolize the procurement of goods and materials. Procurement is important when considering the centralization of communication and processing. If an interlibrary loan unit does not have a control over the procurement process, then mistakes again are likely to happen. One example of this is the opening of the email. This can be understood as a procurement process. If the mail is opened by another unit then the possibility for mistakes increase. By that I mean they should seek to centralize the process of getting items from here to there and vice versa. It is also important to note for the later discussion that this is the first time in which we see the importance of technology emerge. Technology here can play a role in the centralization of procurement. It also has the effect of changing the movement of information along the supply chain, but we will get to that later in the discussion. The third paradigm is logistics.

The logistics paradigm Logistics is very important and is likely the number one paradigm that contemporary interlibrary loan units pay most attention to. For Ayers (2001) logistics is the outbound supply stream. Meaning that is the part where items are exiting the building. For the interlibrary loan units this is likely the lending and returns aspect of the process. How are items returned? How are they packaged? How are they tracked? All of these are logistical problems that each interlibrary loan unit must address. In addressing these, libraries must look for opportunities to increase efficiency and recognize that sometimes the shipment of items can be part of the larger campus shipping mechanism. For example, in the part of the library where the physical transactions are handled, there may be a process where the items are sent to another area of the building or maybe even the campus to have the item shipped.The point of shipment is where the interlibrary loan unit has the most to gain from a logistical assessment. If the item leaves the interlibrary loan unit, it has at that point lost control of the supply chain and is now dependent on another unit to handle the logistics of the physical item moving from point a to point b. This may be an unavoidable problem, but awareness then must be given to the logistics of the process such that the interlibrary loan unit understands what is going on in the supply chain. The fourth paradigm is information.

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The information paradigm The information paradigm seeks to improve the links between the company and the supply chain. This can be seen in a variety of ways in the existing interlibrary loan unit: first, in the ways in which we can communicate between each other throughout the course of the supply chain. This can take the form of emails, phone calls, and even conditionals. An important point is to examine the information that is exchanged between the interlibrary loan unit and the customer.While the customer is the end goal for the supply chain we cannot rule out interactions with them as a point of analysis, especially as the expectations of the users have evolved over time. As students come to expect the ability to locate and request items with very little intervention and seamless as part of the information-seeking process, the way in which information is exchanged begins to evolve. For example, how do libraries communicate with requesting patrons? Is it via email, or social networking? How are requests handled? All of these instances are places where the information paradigm can help in the understanding of the supply chain. The fifth paradigm is the paradigm of business process engineering. This is a very interesting paradigm and not one that is often considered, but one that is critical when we begin to think about how we can evolve from interlibrary loan to resource sharing.

The business process engineering paradigm Business process engineering is the examination of the different processes that are undertaken during the interlibrary loan supply chain. This can be a very challenging topic for interlibrary loan units to undertake because it often means breaking down many of the calcified barriers that have been in place. For example, a phase we are often fond of using is, “We will create a system whereby the only outcome is success.”The phrase is used to create a thought process of assessment, a strategic way of thinking, and illustrates an overall viewpoint of interlibrary loan. Creating a system is the beginnings of the business process engineering assessment of the interlibrary loan unit. First part of the quote is an admission that interlibrary loan is that it is a system, or a supply chain, meaning one process can have a ripple effect on all the others. The second is a system of success. This is what is meant by business process engineering. We need to continually look at our business processes, those processes we perform on a daily basis. We need to critically examine those to ensure that we are not building processes that are inefficient or merely serve as anecdotal to the larger system. For example, in some interlibrary loan units,

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students do the searching and creating of the lists of lenders to get items from other libraries.While at the initial outset the inclusion of students seems simple and even adds the perception of increased speed, the question in the business process engineering is the balance between the increased speed and the increased potential for mistakes. Does the increase in initial processing speed outweigh the overall increase in potential for mistakes and incorrect items to be sent? This is a small example of how the analysis of the business processes must be done in such a way as to consider the entire supply chain. The sixth and final paradigm is strategic.

The strategic paradigm The strategic paradigm is the broadest of the paradigms and is the first to give a glimpse of how interlibrary loan units can use supply-chain management and concepts to evolve interlibrary loan into resource sharing. The strategic paradigm is in a way the critical reflection on the paradigms listed earlier and a recognition that analysis and the movement of items within the supply chain can flow in either direction.What that means is, for example, in lending the normal request process is the library receives the request, searches it, processes it, and sends it on. However, when we factor in the possibility of cancellations, conditionals, etc., we can see how the supply chain has been interrupted and in some cases potentially terminated. The strategic paradigm brings forward another concept that is brought up by Kuglin and Rosenbaum (2001). The schism between information part of the supply chain and the physical product. In the distinction between the physical and informational is not in terms of paradigms.All of the paradigms are part of the process of assessing the interlibrary loan unit. What is meant by the separation of the physical item from the informational or electronic is the idea that there are, in effect, two types of supply chains that function within the interlibrary loan unit. One is the supply chain that applies to the informational request and the second is the supply chain that applies to the physical item. Each of these types of requests have the six paradigms as part of the analysis, but the pressure from each paradigm manifest differently in the informational and physical items. This is very true when we examine contemporary interlibrary loan units.This leads to the two questions posed earlier. In returning to these two questions, what is the best strategy to deal with the separation of the physical item and the information item as it pertains to the supply chain? And second, does it really matter if the product and the information are separated in this matter, meaning, should we endeavor to keep them combined or should we accept a new way of doing things? The

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first question we posed was what is the best strategy for dealing with the separation of the physical item and the informational item. To best understand this, we can examine this process as it happens in the existing workflow.

Resource sharing and the supply chain As interlibrary loan units are pressured to adopt new methodologies they begin to evolve and look to become resource-sharing units. To accomplish this, they need to take into account the variety of processes and services. To that end, to make the transition from interlibrary loan to resource sharing they need to first start with an understanding of the supply chain of interlibrary loan and institute new methods of analysis and workflows. Key among these is the understanding of the relationship between the physical request and the information request associated with it. Resource-sharing units must learn to accept that the physical request and the informational request associated with that item cannot be permanently linked together. There are places in which the information request and the physical request coincide but then there are opportunities where the items diverge. Emphasizing that the process of a supply chain is fluid then focusing on the efficient movement of the physical request with an eye toward the informational request can help to lay the foundation for an effective resource-sharing unit. What would something like this look like? For example, if a resource-sharing unit is making a borrowing request, meaning a library is seeking to get a book from another library, the first step is making the request, meaning the resource-sharing unit identifies the correct book or item that the patron wants. Second, the resource-sharing unit searches for libraries that own this item.Third, a library is selected from a list of available libraries, and finally, the information part of the request is sent to the identified supply chain. It is at this point that the item is merely information. There is no physical manifestation of the request yet. The current supply chain is an informational supply chain. It is interesting to point out that when a request is placed either in OCLC, or in any other major interlibrary loan system, the chosen libraries ironically make a chain of libraries willing to supply an item. While anecdotal, this should illustrate how we have moved beyond a simple paper request and we should start to examine resource sharing as a supply chain. Returning to the example, the request then arrives at the first lending library.This is the first potential pitfall for the supply-chain system.

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Imagine the library first on the list receives the request and in their searching realizes that the item is checked out or is on reserve. The library then signals to the borrowing institution by way of a conditional. The conditional is a recognition that the informational request supply chain is fluid and can flow backward. However, in treating the information request like a nonsupply chain item asking for a condition, they think they are being helpful but they have, in fact, interrupted the supply chain. In creating that conditional, they have stopped the movement of the item through the potential list of libraries, which means that library has intentionally introduced a supply-chain block to convey information that is not necessary and also is information that pertains to the physical request item, which is not an issue with the information request. Moving to the next library, this library identifies that they own the item, and it is searched and queued for retrieval. This is the first opportunity where we can see the merging of the physical request and the informational request. That process happens when the library updates the item and identifies it as something they are prepared to send. It is at this point that the informational request supply chain replicates to the physical item request supply chain, meaning they have filled the request. From there we can track the physical request in conjunction with the informational request item as it moves through the remainder of the supply chain. The informational request, meaning the electronic record of the request, is updated and returned to the borrowing library as something that is in transit to that location. The physical item is processed by the lending library and prepared for shipment.When the physical item arrives at the borrowing institution it is again matched with the informational request and the request is delivered to the customer. It is in this separation between the physical item and the information item that interlibrary loan units that endeavor to see the world as a resource sharing have the most opportunity for success and failure. It is important to learn from the supply-chain concepts and leave open the possibility for treating the physical item and the informational item separately. In the past when interlibrary loan was done with paper and even possibly limited email the physical item and the informational item were rarely separate. This allowed for a more coherent supply chain and one that allowed for far less potential for error. Now that the supply chain has been bifurcated the chance for error and the potential for gain is increased. It also means that the supply chain is open to a lot more moving parts. What then is the prescription for interlibrary loan units that wish to examine their workflows with an eye toward resource sharing? The key

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lies in understanding where the physical item and the information item are matched and where within each of the workflows there are opportunities for improvement. In the beginning stages of any request the supply chain consists entirely of the informational item, that is to say, the electronic transmission of the requesting data is merely information.Very few resources have been invested in the creation and processing of the item. It is here in these early stages we must see this process as one of speed and efficiency. This means that libraries should endeavor to process and send requests as quickly as possible.This is largely due to two reasons. Since this phase can be seen as Ayers (2001) describes as the procurement paradigm, then that should take precedence, and libraries can benefit by incorporating systems that allow for quick transmission. Also, since the item does not necessarily have a physical component, including a variety of sources for retrieval can benefit the supply of the item in a quick and efficient system. On the other end of the supply chain, libraries receiving informational items if they are unable to match the physical item should not be afraid to cancel an item. Conditionals for items that are checked out or on reserve merely serve to stop the supply chain. Since this phase of the process is based on speed many times canceling or allowing an item to move to the next potential supplier is more efficient than attempting to communicate a cancellation or reserve instructional information. In some respects, an emphasis on perfect accuracy could be a hindrance in this phase. Once the item has been accepted by a library that is willing to lend or has the potential to lend, the process changes somewhat. This is where we see the emergence of the physical item and matching it with the informational item. It is at this point where accuracy becomes important. It is important because the informational item and the physical item must match. If the supply chain is a fluid system that can move forward and backward then the places where the information item and the physical item are matched must be exact, otherwise it may be very difficult to locate the item if errors occurs later in the supply chain. Thus it is at the point where physical item and informational item are matched that business process engineering can play a role. It is important to view this step as a part of the larger process and seek to streamline and refine as much as possible to ensure accurate matching of the information item with the physical item. Once the physical item can be accurately matched to the informational item then the supply chain can continue on separately if necessary and that is often the case. Also, the priorities change when the physical item is prepared for shipment.

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The logistics paradigm plays a larger role in the physical item supplychain process. It is important in this phase that the systems in place to pull, box, and ship the item are efficient and potentially controlled by the interlibrary loan unit themselves. The reason logistics becomes more important is that there is a larger need with the physical item to understand where it exists in the world.To that end the development or use of tracking software to go along with the shipping process could be advantageous. Also, on the lending side there is potential for improvements in how items are located and pulled. Improving the pulling of the items would fit with the business process paradigm. Here is an opportunity to examine the methods by which physical items are located, processed, and sent out for shipping. We can see in viewing interlibrary loan in the more favorable resource-sharing supplychain conceptual framework what reveals itself is a push and pull between the processes of the physical item and the processes of the information item. Once the physical item has been boxed up and shipped to another university there is the second opportunity to match the informational item with the physical item. Here at the point of check-in with the borrowing library is the informational item again paired with the physical item. It is also at this point where again we see the presence of the physical item while the information item is temporarily halted in the supply-chain process—halted in the sense that the informational item is held in place while the physical item is checked out and used. The informational item is not entirely static but is used to mark the passage of time, meaning it will signal when the item is due or not due. There is also an opportunity with the static informational item to work on the method of communication with the patron. Improving communication can spur the return or the flow of the physical item from the patron back to the holding university.This is a sample of how the different paradigms of a supply chain can act upon the interlibrary loan system. However, those libraries wishing to move more toward resource sharing are going to want to critically look at this process again. Keeping in mind the six paradigms and an eye toward the two questions we posed at the beginning of this discussion. The first question was, what is the best strategy to deal with the separation of physical item and information as it pertains to the supply chain? It seems like from the summary of the processes presented in this chapter that the best strategy is, in a way, to recognize that these are two separate systems. Viewing them as separate allows for a better understanding of where and when the paradigms can be of help as well as identifying the opportunities for intervention into the process for the purpose of improvement.

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For example, in thinking of the movement of the informational item, the places where we could look for improvement would be in the transmission phase, meaning a need to look for ways to quickly and automatically identify items and send them out to other universities.This is where systems like Relais, RAPID, and Direct Request can offer assistance. Utilizing automated requesting systems, we can streamline the supply chain and offer a certain amount of automation. Also, the ability for users to access some of these systems changes how they interact with resource-sharing units and the expectations they have for supply of the item. In turn, this will get users’ requests out faster and aide in the matching of the item.Where this becomes an issue is in receipt of the informational item at the lending library. Libraries need to recognize that informational items are not physical items and are thus influenced by a different set of criteria. Meaning in the informational phase providing more information that is necessary about the existence of the item can actually serve to hinder the process. As mentioned before things like conditionals for reserve/checked out items actually slow the process down. Upon receipt of the informational item there are areas of opportunity as well. Again, systems like Relais, Z39.50, and even RAPID can help technologically search for items and process them for printing. A new feature for this step is also the IDS Logic. A word of caution, though, in this informational stage. Providing too many conditions for the use of a physical item can also provide a hindrance. For example, if a large library with smaller branches that have innumerable conditions on the use of their items can also serve as a roadblock in this process. Think back to the paradigm of business process engineering and procurement. If the library places too many conditions on the item, it causes the increase for confusion as well as the potential for poorer quality of service. Technological systems have a way of allowing us to continue to conceptualize old processes in a new era. Effectively allowing us to covet and conditionalize items creating in fact less access in a time when we should be thinking of how we can increase access. We understand that loaning out items that are rare or valuable can be nerve racking.The solution here is rather than create so many barriers and conditions it actually might be advantageous to streamline the in-house usage criteria to allow for a consistent experience. If streamlined criteria cannot be met, then it might actually make some sense to cancel the item and allow it to move on. Many libraries would find this to be counterproductive, because they are considering the physical item in this situation. Meaning the physical item is very important and hard to come by. However, the informational item can move quickly between libraries and perhaps might end up at a library with far less conditions.

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Considering the role of the physical item and what processes can help to improve the movement of the physical item through the supply chain, the physical item is the more important item of the two, primarily because that is where the money has been invested by the lending library. The lending library is going to want to see its investment returned with little to no depreciation.To that end, the physical item processing needs to consider the paradigms of function, information, and logistics. In thinking of the functional paradigm this process provides the most opportunity for workflow improvement in the physical item. The functional paradigm suggests that one of the keys to an effective supply chain is ensuring good communication between the units within a company. Examining this paradigm in terms of the physical item, we can answer and address questions such as if the pulling is done by another unit the resourcesharing unit needs to ensure that it is done efficiently and in line with the expectations of that unit. If it is done within the resource sharing, it needs to be handled accordingly. Looking for areas of improvement in communication can be both written and verbal. Are instructions given to the students in a clear and concise manner so that they understand their roles in this process? The physical item also needs to have accurate information, meaning it needs to be easily identified and cataloged, which is in line with the informational paradigm. Are the pull slips configured with the correct information to allow the student to accurately locate the book or determine it’s not on the shelf? The functional paradigm for the physical item also applies when the item is found or not found, meaning when the student returns from the task of pulling. In indicating that the item is not found, it is important to make sure that the communication of the “Not on Shelf ” status from the physical item back to the informational item is done quickly. Since there is no physical item process it is important to allow the informational item to move along the supply chain quickly, meaning conditional messages for items that are on reserve, checked out, or cannot be supplied only serve to slow down the process, returning the physical items that are found and being prepared for shipment. Again, thinking of improving communication between units, do the pull slips have the delivery addresses already on them? That is another opportunity to streamline the process. From there, how are the physical items prepared for shipment? This is also a functional question. Are shipment items mixed with different types of shippers? This type of process can lead to confusion and potential for mistakes. In thinking about the functional paradigm consider using physical barriers to help eliminate mistakes and streamline workflow.What we mean

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by that is consider placing books on a separate table for different couriers. This can serve as a functional break in the workflow and allow for a clearer picture of what item goes with which courier. Different shelving is also a potential solution for this. The functional paradigm can also apply to how student activities are governed. Think about the ways in which the students conduct their work. Are they allowed to move from one task to another or must they complete a task before moving to the next? If they are allowed to move fluidly are there opportunities for staff to verify the quality of work completed. All of these can be functional considerations for the monitoring and improving student workflow. Along with the functional paradigm we must also consider the information paradigm as well. The informational paradigm is closely aligned with the informational item. This is a subtle point but an important one. There are two types of information in this exchange.The first is the information about the physical item, that is, the metadata and the information of the pull slip. The second is how the informational paradigm relates to the informational item. This is understood as how the information about the physical item relates to the informational item. In library terms this can be understood at the metadata about the physical items and how they are related to the electronic information of the information item. It is important to match these two pieces quickly and efficiently. There are several technologies that will be discussed earlier in this book that can help at the point of when the request is received. However, another point is when the physical item has been located and needs to be matched in the system. It is important here to have clear processes in place and to develop a methodology for this. If students are handling this process, we will want to ensure that they have a good grasp of the identifying information to ensure an accurate match. Also at the phase in which the physical item is located we have to ensure that accurate information is added to the informational item, namely the due date. Since the due date notifications are handled by the informational item it is important that this data is accurately translated. The final paradigm that applies most to the physical item is the logistics involved. The logistics paradigm is focused primarily on the physical item. The movement of the item from point a to point b are the sole region of the logistics paradigm. In what ways are items physically moved throughout the resource-sharing unit’s area? Are physical items organized to ensure accurate shipping? Are they labeled in a way to ensure accurate packaging? These are all logistical questions. Finally, in terms of shipping, are the

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appropriate shippers used to deliver the physical items in a timely manner? Is there tracking available to track the package? All of these are opportunities for libraries to streamline the logistical processes on the physical item.The final question is whether or not the separation between the physical item and the informational item matters. What is meant by that is whether or not there needs to be a formal connection or does the separation of these concepts leave open the possibility for evolution. Given the increased capability for patrons to generate informational items in the form of requests, coupled with the evolution of the expectations of the patron driven by technology, there is likely little possibility that the physical item and the informational item can be returned to a coherent piece aside from the opportunities in the supply chain where they are linked.The advantage in the separation is the advantage of the fluidity of the supply chain.The separation allows requests to quickly move from library to library. Being able to identify a holding library quickly using a free-flowing informational item is one of the primary reasons a supply-chain management understanding of resource sharing is critical to the evolution of interlibrary loan into resource sharing. The developments of new ways of thinking about the processing and movement of interlibrary loan items through an interlibrary loan office will require increased emphasis on staff development and training. Having an interlibrary loan staff that is amenable to rapid change and an environment of flux will require a new type of staff member. The challenge with the evolving demands of interlibrary loan and the staff requirements are also compounded by the act that many departments will have employees who are used to a different way of viewing the process. There are a number of books and methods that describe change management and motivating employees for change.The transition to a nimbler interlibrary loan department can take time. To better understand how some of these concepts can help get the process started we will briefly discuss some change management models that may be of particular use in interlibrary loan.

CHANGE MANAGEMENT AND INTERLIBRARY LOAN Regardless of which change management strategy the interlibrary loan office chooses to undertake, maintenance and assessment of staff performance will be a crucial aspect to continued success. To assess staff performance, it may be necessary to develop a model that is widely used in corporate America as a tool that allows assessment of employees as well as

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affording the manager an opportunity to understand the process from a ground level. Often when change is undertaken in any organization there will be elements that have difficulty transitioning. Some difficulties may result in the appearance of embracing the new workflow while continuing to follow out of date practices of counterproductive workflows. To that end it may be necessary to institute a staff observational idea referred to as the Professional Development Plan (PDP).

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT PLANS Very little is written about the methodology for evaluating library employees. The discipline recognizes the importance of the evaluation and the importance of a human resources development plan. However, there is very little written or discussed about how a manager, especially a new manager, can go about filling out the employee evaluation. The methodology discussed in this paper is the PDP. This plan can serve as a template for the employee to understand where they are in terms of the job objectives and expectations. The plan is the output from a method we have come to call a desk-a-long.The desk-a-long helps serve as a sort of participant observation of the employee performance and can help greatly in understanding many functions of the job as they are seen by those charged with completing the daily work tasks. It is our hope that through the use of this methodology we can develop better evaluations and better human resource development plans. Performance evaluations are a crucial component to any management of a library unit; they are even more critical for the new manager. How you evaluate your employees can help with developing the correct training methods. It can help with identifying areas of knowledge gaps. It can also help root out institutional problems or errors that can cause a well-functioning unit to falter. While many of us managers in libraries are given a standard form as a method of completing the evaluation we are not given a methodology or a series of suggested steps that we can follow to fill in those boxes. The method we propose for helping with this conundrum is the desk-a-long followed by the PDP. The desk-a-long is a participant observation of the employee’s daily work activities. A desk-a-long is a daily process that can be conducted throughout the year at the manager’s discretion. The process goes that the manager or evaluator sits with the employee at the employee’s desk for the entire day observing and occasionally interacting with the employee as they go about their daily activities. The purpose is to

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observe and annotate what the employee does or does not do. From that the manager develops a PDP. The PDP gives the employee an opportunity to see where his or her strengths and weakness are. It is also an opportunity to provide suggestions for employee development opportunities. To see how the desk-a-long and the PDP fits into the larger evaluation process it is important to understand the roles employee evaluations play in the library. The performance evaluation is a ubiquitous aspect of library operations. It is also a moment when managers and employees can get together to help understand and calibrate the day-to-day activities with the overall objectives of the job. This can be especially helpful for a new manager who may not already know the expertise of his or her staff, or the expectations that the department may have. It is also an opportunity to assess the overall mission of the department and make any changes that are necessary. The job evaluation is a very important part of the understanding of the management performance of a library unit. However, aside from checking a series of boxes on a provided form there is little discussed in the way of methodologies for conducting a job evaluation. The literature, though, is rich with discussion of how the importance of evaluations cannot be overlooked. As Jean Holcomb (2006) writes in her article “The Annual Performance Evaluation: Necessary Evil or Golden Opportunity?” the annual performance evaluation is a regular occurrence that must be addressed. She writes, At the core of the reasoning behind the existence of the annual performance evaluation process rests the belief that people want to do a good job. For an employee to do a good job, the organization must provide the tools its workers need to succeed. The annual performance evaluation functions as one tool to measure and guide worker productivity.

It is clear for the author that performance evaluations can serve as a useful tool in helping the employee understand his or her expectations and help ease the concerns of the standards that are to guide the employee’s day-to-day activities. Julie Gedeon and Richard Rubin (1999) describe the importance of performance evaluation in their article “Attribution Theory and Academic Library Performance Evaluation” in the following way: Performance Evaluation is a vital part of the network of basic human resource functions. Its purposes are many… • Providing Formal opportunity to discuss performance. • Helping employees level of expected performance. • Provide feedback to the extent to which the employee is meeting performance expectation.

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• Identifying areas of performance improvement. • Recognizing outstanding performance. • Providing information for human resource decision such as promotion and tenure Gedeon and Rubin (1999)

The importance of performance evaluations cannot be overlooked. The challenge is aside from the formal evaluation form there is little guidance for the new managers as to what methodology they can use to develop a comprehensive and reflective method of conducting an informed evaluation. One method is proposed here and that is the desk-a-long PDP method. In looking at the case studies we can see that this process serves to not only help the manager understand where the gaps in knowledge and expectations are, it can also serve to uncover processes that are out of date.The PDP works well to give the employee clear guidance on expectations as well and furnish him or her with the tools for success. In looking at the average evaluation numbers during Case study #1, the average evaluation for the staff prior to the implementation of the process was 3.62 on a five-point scale.This is an average score of satisfactory. After the implementation of the desk-a-long process, that average jumped to 4.26. This is a significant jump in the average from satisfactory of above average. This jump is not entirely attributed to the desk-a-long, PDP process, but it can be credited for helping align the employee expectations and behavior with the new department expectations implemented by a new management style. We can also see this type of jump in the averages during the implementation of Case study #2. Prior to the start of the new library associate in Case study #2 the average for the staff was 4.13. After the first series of desk-a-long and PDP with the new library associate those averages again rose to 4.50. This continued increase illustrates that there is definitely value added in opening a line of dialog and assessment that goes along with the desk-a-long, PDP process. Utilizing this methodology, a new manager or a continuing manager who may have lost focus on the objectives of the department can realign the mission and objectives to the group and have a demonstrable effect on improving the performance of his or her employees.

1.1 CASE STUDY: PDP #1 When Ryan Litsey introduced the PDP concept, I was intrigued. Not only is the concept simple and elegant, but it also blended our complementary management styles, bringing the best of both to the fore. Ryan is a systems

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and efficiency expert, and I know people. The PDP maximizes efficiency because it enables the manager to pinpoint inefficiencies, which then can be corrected. Conversely, efficiencies in one aspect of interlibrary loan can often be applied to other aspects also, creating synergistic improvements. The PDP maximizes effectiveness because the manager gets acquainted with staff members’ ways of thinking, motivations, and performance styles. The PDP gives the manager an opportunity to observe each staff member one on one during the course of a business day with the goals of learning how he completes tasks, assessing where efficiencies can be introduced, and encouraging him to continue honing his skills. We decided to perform the PDPs twice a year, in April and October. April is when the Texas Tech University Library is preparing for staff evaluations, so it’s an ideal time to observe staff members. Also both months are busy enough to observe workflow but not so busy that the workload is overwhelming. Quite simply, this is how the process worked: I sat for a day with each staff member, observing how he/she worked and accomplished tasks. I asked questions, shared ideas, and took notes as the day progressed.Within a week, I wrote a summary of my observations and made training recommendations. My comments were always positive even in the face of problems or issues because I firmly believe that people respond better to being built up rather than being put down. After reviewing the summary and recommendations with Ryan, I shared them with the staff member. From my perspective, the best thing about the PDPs was that I learned all the workflows and tasks of the three areas of interlibrary loan. It made all the difference in my ability to train, evaluate, and coach staff members; resolve issues; and contribute to our ability to offer excellent customer service. The PDP gives the manager insight into staff members’ strengths and weaknesses—as well as a tool (the training recommendations) for holding them accountable for learning and improving. It increases efficiency when we can take staff members’ best practices and create a manual that “anyone can come in and follow and be successful even if we’re not here,” as Ryan says. We did create that manual, which enabled cross-training, ensured that everyone is trained in the same way, and clarified our expectations. Of course, we also found problems and devised ways to prevent them in the future. For example, on her observation day, we discovered that our document delivery person needed a way to account for all her requests after each printing and pulling session. (We print and pull at 9 a.m., 12 p.m., and

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3 p.m. and account for anything unfinished at 5 p.m.) She had two requests that were printed at 3 p.m., but they hadn’t been pulled and filled by 4:15 p.m. So we devised a simple, commonsense method for finding out what had happened to the requests: backtrack and ask student assistants about them. We found the requests’ pull slips in the sorting slots, and a student pulled them. This simple problem and solution taught us the importance of accounting for pull slips after each printing and pulling session, and we have incorporated it into our daily routine. One of the funniest discoveries we made was that our lead lending person was hoarding boxes at her desk because she thought she would “need them someday.” From that, I learned to be much more proactive in ordering sufficient shipping supplies, particularly boxes. Our customer service improved because we became more efficient, which freed our time to focus on difficult interlibrary loan requests. We discussed how to be better borrowers from the lending perspective and how to be better lenders from the borrowing perspective. We grew closer together, learning how to work very well as a team. And we were motivated to pursue further improvements and successes. In my book, anything that helps a diverse group of people maximize their abilities, offer stellar customer service, pull together as a team—and offer a template for future teams’ success—is well worth the effort. So I would absolutely utilize PDPs again. Source: Conni Marcum,Texas Tech University Libraries

1.2 CASE STUDY: PDP #2 For me, the PDP is an opportunity to evaluate the staff both as a unit and as individuals and to assess whether there might be areas to improve upon at both levels as well as an opportunity to evaluate myself as an instructor and supervisor. As such, I have altered my approach to this process each time to best suit the needs of the office at the time. For my initial desk-a-longs, I sat with each staff member for a full workday, following them through their typical personal workflow, and focused more on individual assessment than improvement as a whole. At this point in time, my primary experience with the workflow was from my time as a contemporary prior to my being hired as Library Associate, so it was fascinating to see each staff member’s unique approach to the processing and searching process. From a pedagogical standpoint, I tried to make my presence more of observation than unwanted instruction, as it is more beneficial

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to know the decision process a staff member goes through on their own so that potential areas of opportunity can be discovered. As this was the first time I had done this, the process was quite illuminating. With each staff member, I observed and discussed their typical approach to the workflow, including what tasks might be prioritized or done at specific times and why they might do this. I watched how each staff member processed transactions, including what they might do with a difficult or unusual request and how they deal with the grind of the everyday processes in the office, and at least discussed processes like billing that may not occur on a day-to-day basis.Throughout each desk-a-long, a small amount of instruction occurred when a staff member asked for guidance or encountered a particularly unusual situation which I made note of to help evaluate training opportunities. In sitting with each staff member for an entire day, I learned two overarching themes within the office. First, some of our staff members were very, very quick but this speed was coming at the expense of attention to detail and mistakes that should have been easily preventable were often overlooked. In conjunction with this, there were times when an easier solution was taken rather than spending the time and effort needed to find an item that may have had a more difficult or unusual citation. Second, it gave me a better sense of the overall writing skills in the office.While writing skills are not a primary skill needed in our office, a great deal of our customer service occurs via email and our patron base is sometimes overly aware of grammatical errors. With this in mind and having observed some possible issues with our student training over the ensuing months, my second round of desk-a-longs was still a full day but equally balanced between the usual workflow and having each staff member talk and work with me through the student workflow as though they were training a new student. Using a similar method of observation to the first, I used Socratic questioning to encourage the staff to expand upon their mock-training from time to time to encourage them to include ideas or exceptions they might not ordinarily think of. Adding this layer to the desk-a-longs both allowed me to examine the staff ’s didactic approach as well as assess their facility within the student workflow. Unsurprisingly, this led me to discover that staff for the different units tended to be more familiar with the student workflow associated with their respective workflow and gave me the opportunity to refresh them in the processes that they may not complete as often. Aside from this, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that staff-to-student instruction overall is done

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effectively and was able to give direction to bolster instruction in areas a given staff member might not usually train on. The third and most recent round of desk-a-longs was along the lines of the second, each day split between the workflow and mock-training, though this set was scheduled more strategically to allow me to assist with the workflow as it was much busier in the office than it had been during the previous two. I approached this cycle looking for ways the office as a whole might improve and split my time between observation and assisting with the workflow myself, particularly watching for scheduled points in the workflow as well as unscheduled but crucial tasks, interspersing those with mock-training as before. By this third round, I discovered I had a relatively solid sense of how each staff member works within the workflow and could concentrate more on anomalies and specificity rather than the overview. Occasionally small workflow issues that had not been addressed yet would arise but a solution was usually found before the end of the day. A staff member might ask for pointers on better searching practices. After a software update, another staff member discovered that they had lost the safeguard to check for billing before processing and I worked with that unit to modify the transaction interface to show the needed information. A different staff member might realize they lacked knowledge of a little-used workflow and ask for additional training. I saw less overarching issues and more openings for minor course corrections with pervasive themes to consider for office-wide development opportunities. After some contemplation, a PDP was written for each staff member. Each PDP is divided into three sections, Areas of Strength, Areas of Opportunity, and Training and Suggestions. Efforts were made to make the Areas of Strength the most lengthy and weighted portion. For this section, I tried to include positive actions that each staff member did with as much specificity as possible, whether it be contributions to the workflow, attention to detail, or aspects of their approach that added to the quality of their work. While this could be from any aspect of their work, I strove to find positive aspects for each staff member from within their personal workflow, interpersonal interactions with staff and students, and general office decorum and professionalism, three areas loosely aligned with the sections on the university-mandated evaluation forms. This was followed by Areas of Opportunity, a much briefer section of specific aspects of the workflow or professional decorum that each staff member might work on.This generally consisted of one or two specific areas to develop within the workflow or professional conduct as well as one area we would like to work on as a staff

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over the coming months. For example, a newer staff member might be recommended to familiarize themselves with areas of the workflow other than their own so they can assist as necessary and the entire office will be assessing teaching and interactive styles as a staff. Finally,Training and Suggestions contained assigned trainings and recommended best practices to address Areas of Opportunity as well as personal development. This may include workflow-based tutorials, courses through university provided ComputerBased Training or Lynda, online tutorials from other academic institutions available freely or through Coursera, or scheduled webinars or face to face training through the library. Overall, desk-a-longs and PDPs are valuable assessment tools for both staff and supervisor. As much of our workflow involves individual data assessment, they allow me to have better knowledge of the day-to-day workings of the office to create a more detailed overview which then informs both individual staff development and recommendations as well as direction for office-wide training and developing processes. As with any pedagogical tool, I expect that I will continue to adapt this to fit the needs and concerns of the office at the time it is used. Source: Katie DeVet,Texas Tech University Libraries

1.3 CASE STUDY: THE ROTATION Introduction On January 2, 2014, returning to work from winter break, ILL staff members at the University of Houston (UH) found the usual annual piles of returned books, unopened packages, and requests waiting to be processed. What was unusual is that two staff members were sick that day and unable to return to work. With one staff member still out of the country on a planned vacation, and most of the student workers not yet back on campus, that left only two people to tackle the holiday backlog. This was bad enough, but when the work was divided up the stress level increased with the realization that neither person knew how to do several of the necessary tasks. These were tasks that had been assigned to other staff members or student workers for so long that, although at some point every staff member had been trained on them as part of a cross-training effort, time and technology upgrades had rendered that training useless. That Thursday proved to be a tough day, but it resulted in an understanding that grew into a vision. Cross-training was pointless if the knowledge gained wasn’t reinforced and kept up to date through use. An idea was born to find a way to better share work and ensure coverage by making

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sure everyone participated in every part of the workflow. In July of that year, what came to be called “The Rotation” was implemented. It was a new way of scheduling and distributing work in the ILL unit that broke traditional silos and sought to increase group efficiency, cement learning, and grow expertise in different ways. The Rotation has allowed UH ILL to keep up with dramatically increasing volume in work without adding additional staff, and while improving customer service and turnaround times.

Background ILL at the University of Houston is a unit of the Information and Access Services Department (IAS). The unit is supervised by the Assistant Head of IAS, with four full-time ILL staff members and one-half ILL/half circulation staff member. Historically, the UH ILL unit was structured much like any traditional large ILL operation. Staff members had areas of assigned responsibility broken out by process type: one staff member assigned to Borrowing, two to Lending, and one to Document Delivery. Student workers were responsible for repetitive tasks like searching the catalog, updating requests, checking items out, and packaging materials for shipping. This work, which takes place in an assembly-line style common area in the center of the unit, is collectively known as “line work” or “the line.”This system of dividing work resulted in staff members who were very expert at their individual area, and the unit prided itself on the depth of knowledge staff members possessed in their area of expertise. However, problems with this system had been apparent for some time: staff members often had little to no knowledge of the work done by other staff members or by the student workers. This made it difficult to cover when there was an absence, or for staff to help each other when one area was particularly busy or backed up. Poor customer service often resulted when the expert in a particular area was unavailable to answer a question or solve a problem. The situation also led to an uneven distribution of work. In particular, this was true of the student manager, a lending specialist. Because this staff member was familiar with the line as a result of training the students, it was she who wound up filling in when work was piling up or students called in sick. Repeatedly, we found that this staff member was called upon to do a great deal of extra work, while others in the unit were unable to assist. In 2011 through 2012, the ILL unit had worked to address these issues with a comprehensive cross-training plan. With the help of all ILL staff members, a list was developed of all tasks that required continuity of service. This list formed the basis of the cross-training initiative, with each staff

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member responsible for identifying areas where they needed development and seeking training as appropriate. Progress on individual training plans was evaluated as part of each staff member’s annual performance review. Although this plan was successfully implemented, and all ILL staff members completed training in the listed areas, there was no plan for staff members to repeatedly apply their new skills. The idea was that, once everyone was trained, staff would jump in to help whenever the need arose. Unfortunately, this was not the way events unfolded. Instead, staff members continued to focus on their individual areas of responsibility, leaving shared tasks to the students and the student manager.Thanks to software upgrades and changes in procedure, the training received as part of the initiative was soon outdated, and since it had rarely been reinforced it was fading from staff memories. This was the situation on that fateful day in January, 2014.

The plan Using the cross-training list as a starting point, a comprehensive list of ILL tasks in all three areas, Borrowing, Lending, and Document Delivery, was created. ILL staff members were asked to contribute to this list, adding anything that they were currently responsible for and the approximate number of hours per week that they spent on each task. This massive list was broken down into three categories: tasks that require in-depth expertise, tasks that require moderate training but not years of experience, and tasks that could be done with little or no training. Several tasks surfaced that had quietly been done for years but were no longer necessary; these were eliminated altogether. Those tasks that required little to moderate training were divided into the three task areas (Borrowing, Lending, and Document Delivery), and formed the basis for a duty roster. The duty roster lists the process a staff member in a given area is responsible for, along with the ILLiad queues or actions that make up that process (see Fig. 1.1). Attempts were made to make the Borrowing and Lending categories approximately equal in the number of hours required per week to accomplish listed tasks. (Document Delivery, at the time, simply did not have the volume to equal Borrowing and Lending in terms of hours per week.) The tasks in the Borrowing and Lending categories each equaled approximately 20 hours per week, according to the time estimates supplied by staff members. This meant that the remaining 20 hours per week could be spent on assigned projects, or on those tasks that were identified as requiring in-depth expertise, which remained assigned to an “expert” staff member in each area.

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Queues or acons responsible for Process Borrowing Clear copyright Process incoming borrowing requests Process 1 level extensive search requests Process borrowing unfilleds Process electronic delivery at least once daily Process incoming ILL paged items Process renewal requests for our patrons

Awaing Copyright Clearance Awaing Request Processing Awaing Extensive Searching Awaing Unfilled Processing Electronic Delivery buon on borrowing ribbon Paged Requests Renewed by Customer to mm/dd/yy, Awaing Denied Renewal Processing, Awaing Renewal OK Processing

Lending Call numbers Renewal requests Condionals Updang NOS items Updang lending returns in ILLiad Clear request condionalized queue Pull slips* Document Delivery Print pull slips Deliver electronic arcles Call numbers Books & returnables Process Distance Ed materials Paged items from UHD/UHCL Microfilm Scanning

Awaing Lending Request Processing Awaing Renewal Request Processing Awaing Condional Request Processing Pull slips returned from shelving Pull slips returned from borrowing libraries Request Condionalized Make sure pull slips printed and taken to shelving at required mes

Print pull slips and make sure delivered to shelving at required mes “PDF” requests in In DD Stacks Searching Awaing Document Delivery Processing, Awaing Faculty Photocopy Processing, Awaing Distance Ed Processing Process books, microfilm, and other items requested from our collecon Check out and ship materials requested by Distance Ed patrons Page requested materials; Follow up on items in Paged Items queue Make sure arcles from microfilm are scanned & delivered Make sure arcles are scanned and delivered

Backup – Perform any of above tasks when extra help needed. Fill in for absent coworkers. Take care of processing line as needed. *Tasks marked with asterisk: Staff members do not necessarily have to perform these tasks themselves, but are responsible for seeing that they are done each day. If students are not available to complete the task, or if staff member has extra me, staff member should complete these tasks themselves.

Figure 1.1  Rotation duty roster.

A schedule was created in which each full-time ILL staff member was assigned a different area of the duty roster each week (see Fig. 1.2). Out of every 4 weeks, each staff member would spend 1 week responsible for Borrowing tasks, 1 week responsible for Lending tasks, 1 week responsible for Document Delivery tasks, and 1 week serving as the backup for all of the above.The backup week was envisioned as a way to ensure service continuity while allowing time for staff to catch up on projects or individual duties. The person assigned Document Delivery for the week, since volume in that area was much lighter, would serve as the second backup, in the instance more than one staff member was out or that additional help was needed in another area. The vision was that this scheduled sharing of tasks would ensure that everyone’s knowledge was kept up to date in all areas, and that no one person was left to do more than their fair share of the unit’s work. In addition, to ensure that staff members remained up to date on and contributed to line work when needed, a Line Work Backup Schedule was created (see Fig. 1.3). Each staff member in ILL, including the half ILL/half circulation staff member, was assigned one station on the line each week. In addition to their Rotation duties and their individually assigned duties, staff

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Week of 4/10 4/17 4/24 5/1 5/8 5/15 5/22 5/29 6/5

Borrowing

Doc Del

Selene Maia Athena Iris Selene Maia Athena Iris Selene

Iris Selene Maia Athena Iris Selene Maia Athena Iris

Lending Athena Iris Selene Maia Athena Iris Selene Maia Athena

Backup n/a Athena Iris Selene Maia Athena Iris Selene Maia

Figure 1.2  Sample rotation schedule.

Mail station

Borrowing station 1 borrowing scanning station

Borrowing station 2

Maia Iris Athena Lupe Selene Maia Iris Athena Lupe

Selene Maia Iris Athena Lupe Selene Maia Iris Athena

Lupe Selene Maia Iris Athena Lupe Selene Maia Iris

Week of

17-Apr 24-Apr 1-May 8-May

15-May

22-May 29-May 5-Jun 12-Jun

Lending station 2 Scanning station 1 & 2 Lending flatbed station Athena Lupe Selene Maia Iris Athena Lupe Selene Maia

Sierra check -in station Iris Athena Lupe Selene Maia Iris Athena Lupe Selene

Figure 1.3  Sample line backup schedule.

members were required to monitor their assigned station and pitch in if student workers were unable to complete the necessary tasks. Each staff member’s annual performance criteria were updated to include Rotation and Line Work Backup duties, in addition to any individual duties or project goals.

Implementation In the spring of 2014, the final plan for the Rotation was shared with ILL staff members, and the duty roster distributed. Staff members were responsible for working with colleagues or the Assistant Head of IAS to obtain needed training in any of the areas. After several weeks of refresher trainings, in July 2014 ILL staff members began their first week on the Rotation. The first schedule covered 6 weeks, with staff members rotating each week. At first, the learning curve was steep for several staff members, particularly those who’d worked for many years focusing on only one area. Staff members requested a temporary change to the schedule, asking for 2 weeks in a row on each area to allow them to gain fluency and “find the groove” before switching to a new task. The second schedule accommodated this, with 2 weeks on each task. After trying the 2-week system out, staff members voted to return to the 1-week rotation, which has been in effect ever since. Other tweaks have been made based on staff suggestions, including the order of the assigned weeks. Originally,

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staff did a week in Borrowing, followed by a week in Lending, then a week in Document Delivery, and finally a week as the Backup. Staff requested that the order be changed to: Borrowing, Document Delivery, Lending, Backup. This new order more evenly rotates the busy weeks in Borrowing and Lending with the less-taxing weeks in Document Delivery and Backup. There have also been small additions to the duty roster, with new tasks being added or moved from one area to another to create a more logical workflow or accommodate a new process.

Outcomes Overall, the Rotation has been successful in meeting the goals of ensuring cross-training and up-to-date skills and more evenly distributing work among all ILL staff members. Staff members no longer complain about being unfamiliar with certain aspects of the process, and no one person is taxed inordinately when volume is heavy or student workers are out. The Rotation has also resulted in improved customer service; true cross-training has allowed all ILL staff members to respond to patron inquiries on any area. This reduces the “bounce” experienced by customers in the past who were passed from Lending to Borrowing staff members to get their issue addressed by a specialist in the area.The Rotation also ensures that all processes can be completed each day, regardless of who is present. This ensures consistent processing times, and a consistently high level of service. By providing two slower weeks each month, the Rotation has also allowed staff members time to work on projects or to catch up on work that may have been neglected during busy periods. This has allowed for better technology troubleshooting, expansion of services, and the launching of several new initiatives. It also helps to minimize periods of prolonged stress due to busy seasons or high volumes overall. Perhaps the most pronounced benefit of the Rotation has been one that was unanticipated when the scheduling system was first conceived. In the last three years, UH ILL has seen a significant increase in the volume of requests received, and in the number of new users. Between fiscal years 2013 and 2016, ILL Borrowing requests have increased by 9%, new user accounts have increased 13%, and Document Delivery requests have increased a staggering 352%.The Rotation schedule, by spreading the work more evenly and ensuring that tasks can be completed by any member of the unit, has allowed ILL to keep up with this marked increase in volume without hiring additional staff members or increasing hours worked, and without any negative impact to the customer experience.

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Drawbacks to the new schedule have included the loss of comfort for those staff members who had many years’ experience in their assigned areas, and the stress associated with major changes to schedules and group norms. Another perceived drawback is that staff members are required to be knowledgeable on more areas, requiring more training than staff positions at this level have traditionally required. Especially since salaries remained constant when the new system was implemented, this seemed unfair to some staff members, who perceived that they were being asked to do more work without additional compensation. A potential drawback that we may see in the coming years is the loss of the kind of in-depth expertise that was built under the old system of specialization. UH ILL is fortunate to have staff members who have many years’ accumulated knowledge in both Borrowing and Lending. As these staff members move on, or as processes in these areas change, there is a chance that the Rotation system may not allow individual staff members to build this significant depth of knowledge in any one area. This remains to be seen.

Conclusion Two years into the Rotation schedule, UH ILL is unlikely to ever go back. The current volume of requests demands that staff members be able to jump from task to task, and have the ability to adjust to work levels and help out where help is needed. Intensive cross-training, combined with continual practice in all areas has insured that there will never be a repeat of that fateful, and stressful, day in January 2014. Rotation scheduling is a tool that has allowed UH ILL to maximize the potential of staff members, and empower them to invest in the work of the entire unit, not just the work specifically assigned to them. The schedule has fostered a greater sense of teamwork and shared experience among staff members, and has allowed for some group decision making that would not have been possible when skills were siloed. In the future, it is likely that some circulation functions, like book paging, will be incorporated into the Rotation schedule. Source: Nora Dethloff, University of Houston Libraries

CONCLUSION In this chapter, the discussion focused on the types of staff needed for the resource-sharing unit of the contemporary academic library. Particular attention was paid to the transformation of the interlibrary loan requesting system into the resource-sharing supply chain.The development of the supply-chain

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understanding of resource sharing has a fundamental impact on the role the staff play in the processing and fulfillment of requests. To that end there is a greater need for staff assessment and creative ways of organizing the resourcesharing unit.The case studies served to illustrate new models of assessment of staff and ways of organizing the resource-sharing group to allow for maximum flexibility and effectiveness in the more fluid supply-chain environment. Some key takeaways are the different supply-chain paradigms that can serve to lay a theoretical and methodological framework for understanding the separation of the physical item and the informational item in the supplychain model. In the next chapter we will focus more on how technology has changed the ways in which students interact with the library as a whole and resource sharing in particular.

REFERENCES Ayers, J.B., 2001. Handbook of Supply Chain Management. St. Lucie Press, Boca Raton, FL. Bechtel, C., Jayaram, J., 1997. Supply chain management: a strategic perspective. The International Journal of Logistics Management 8 (1), 15–34. Cooper, M.C., Lambert, D.M., Pagh, J.D., 1997. Supply chain management: more than a new name for logistics. The International Journal of Logistics Management 8 (1), 1–14. Forrester, J.W., 1958. Industrial dynamics. Harvard Business Review 36 (4), 37–66. Gedeon, J.A., Rubin, R.E., 1999. Attribution theory and academic library performance evaluation. The Journal of Academic Librarianship 25 (1), 18–25. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1016/S0099-1333(99)80171-2. ISSN 0099-1333. Holcomb, J., 2006. Managing by the book… * The annual performance evaluation: necessary evil or golden opportunity? Law Library Journal 98 (3), 569–574. Kuglin, F.A., Rosenbaum, B.A., 2001. The Supply Chain Network @ Internet Speed: Preparing Your Company for the E-Commerce Revolution. Amacom, New York.

CHAPTER 2

Technology and The Evolution of Resource Sharing OVERVIEW In the previous chapter we examined how a department that is evolving toward a resource-sharing framework has to reexamine the organizational and workflow structures of the staff members. In this chapter we examine the different types of technologies an evolving department can embrace to help create a more seamless integration of the request made by the patron to the delivery of the item. Technology can be broken out into two distinctive parts. The first part is the overall types of technological modifications a resource-sharing unit would want to make to ensure they are meeting the patrons needs. ​Overall technological modifications come in the categories of systems that can enhance the general functioning of resource-sharing systems. Some of these technologies can include updates to programming languages, changes to website coding structures and even updates in the processing power of the current generation of computers. Technology of this type is categorized as generalizable because the impact can be felt across the library. The by-products of such developments are the changing nature of the patron preferences and interaction with the library, as well as, changes in what the patron will come to expect from their experiences with the new systems. In many ways this type of generalizable technology creates new knowledge and new possibilities. The increased potential necessarily influences the specific ILL processes and workflows.The second part are the specific types of ILL processes and workflows that can help speed the process from request to delivery. Some of the more specific processes that have been developed in the last 5 years or so are the developments that improve the accuracy and delivery of items.These systems are capable of not only finding the appropriate library to send an item, but also determining the availability and even moving items with a given workflow unmediated. These types of specific workflows and processes, previously unknown or undoable, have been unlocked by general technological developments and capabilities. In examining the first part there are some generalizable technological Resources Anytime, Anywhere ISBN 978-0-08-101989-4 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-101989-4.00002-X

Copyright © 2017 Ryan Litsey. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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techniques a resource-sharing department should endeavor to implement. The first of these is a web page coding system called responsive design.

2.1 CASE STUDY: LIBRARY TECHNOLOGY The age of mobile Internet is already upon us. As of April 2015, mobile users account for more than half of all Internet traffic. Library patrons are therefore already expected to be mobile users most of the time. Library services must have mobile-friendly methods of access. In the past, this was typically accomplished by offering a separate mobile experience to mobile users. This is a design approach that is a decade or more out of date. Mobile users are the norm rather than the exception, so treating them as a special case worthy of only a subset of library functionality is counter to reality. Responsive design is the best solution because it takes a unified approach to web design. Responsively designed web pages will look consistently good on any device. It is therefore worth customizing, retheming, or otherwise modifying existing library web applications to take advantage of the power of responsive design. Users will expect and appreciate the mobile-first approach of responsive design. Responsive design is possible through advancements in cascading style sheets (CSS) standards, whereby a web page can discover the size of the screen on which it is displayed. This allows different styling to be applied to a page depending on the width of the screen. On the structural Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) portion of the page, items are specified on a relative scale, such as a percentage or a number of equally spaced parts of a grid. Images are provided in varying sizes to accommodate larger and smaller displays. Menus are expected to collapse on small screens and expand on large screens. One popular responsive design collapsible menu convention is known as the “hamburger,” commonly represented as three horizontal parallel lines. Users expect to tap the hamburger to see menu options on a mobile version of a responsively designed web page, and they expect the hamburger to disappear completely on the desktop or tablet-sized version of a responsively designed web page. Responsive design principles are now integrated into many popular web frameworks. Bootstrap is a wildly popular responsive web design framework. It is an open source product, originally developed at Twitter in 2011 by Mark Otto and Jacob Thornton, that has progressed through several major versions. It has become a de facto web standard, even being included in other popular web frameworks such as Joomla and Drupal. According to BuiltWith.com, approximately 12 million websites run Bootstrap.

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The elements of Bootstrap that make it attractive from a developer perspective are the standardization of CSS classes around expected user behaviors and states of an application. Common controls that are highly desirable but missing from regular HTML—such as sliders, progress bars, and alerts—are available in Bootstrap through easily understood CSS classes. The screen real estate is conveniently conceptualized as a 12-unit grid, allowing for rapid prototyping and deployment of screen layouts that will render appropriately on any size screen. These features and more make Bootstrap an excellent choice for modernizing library web services.

Other trends in library technology Over the years, we have identified other technological trends in the library world that are worth mentioning but not exploring in great detail here. However, perhaps one of these areas will spark inspiration for a project at your institution. First, there is the move from paper-based products and processes to digital products and processes. Already libraries are moving toward eBooks as consumers are. Libraries are also digitizing their collections where possible and practical. Theses and dissertations at academic institutions are a natural starting point, but other special collections can be digitized as well. More libraries are moving to paperless office processes as well. Online catalogs have replaced card catalogs long ago, but libraries are also moving toward paperless checkout of library equipment, paperless reservation of library facilities, and paperless intraoffice documents. Another dominant trend in library technology is exposing as many services as possible online as web services. Ideally, these web services are consumable in an automated way, so that other institutions or creative customers can use them in interesting, perhaps unpredictable ways. This is already an older tradition in libraries, considering shared information such as holdings data and catalog access. Now libraries are pushing the limits beyond these expected services. Behind the scenes, evolution in database technology has also changed library processes for the better. For example, databases that used to live on someone’s desktop computer are now being recreated in relational database servers, such as Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, or similar products. And relational database servers are now moving to the cloud, where possible or practical, resulting in more efficient and reliable service. Big data projects across multiple institutions are becoming more common as well, with large datasets becoming library products of the future.

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New technologies like 3D printing are also coming to libraries. Soon patrons will expect libraries to offer 3D printing as a service. This coming expectation begs for the creation of new software tools to schedule 3D printing jobs and to integrate 3D printing with the rest of a library’s online presence. Spotting emerging technological trends is something that can be done by anyone who pays attention. Journals and books relevant to librarianship are excellent sources of technological trends in libraries, but they should be considered as a starting point. Staying abreast of new government and industry standards is also important. Relevant email lists are great resources as well; even if you don’t consider yourself a programmer or IT person, consider subscribing to library technology email lists such as the excellent code4lib email list. Of course, conferences about the intersection of libraries and technology are worthwhile, too, and they are becoming more plentiful and ubiquitous. Vendor presentations are typically worth attending to stay aware of what is out there. Colleagues at other institutions are often eager to help in the library world. A simple email to a stranger at another library can often result in a detailed step-by-step walkthrough of how they implemented a noteworthy piece of technology; never be afraid to ask. Your patrons also will be sources of technological inspiration, from the questions they ask and the requests that they make to the new observable behaviors that they bring to your library. Social media and news sites can also inspire, if you can cut through the fluff. Regardless of the origin of new and vital technological trends, the best way to assimilate them into your institution’s offerings is with your own team of developers.

Building a library technology development team Librarians are not always technologists, and even when they are, their other duties may keep them from acting as developers when the need for new library technology arises. Vendors are often unable to meet the emerging needs of libraries in an affordable way.Therefore, the best overall solution to the problem of keeping libraries current is for libraries themselves to build teams of developers to create and customize technological solutions inhouse. But how? Creating a team to develop technological solutions in-house may sound like a daunting task. And there are pitfalls to be sure, as with any endeavor; the question of librarians and programmers working together looms large. It may seem like a daunting task, but even small institutions can and should house successful teams for in-house development.

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There are several essential elements for creating and maintaining a s­uccessful programming team: at least one dedicated developer, source ­control, project planning, and regular communication with stakeholders.

Dedicated developers First, it’s vital to have at least one team member who can spend their time programming without interruption. Time and budget constraints make it tempting to combine programming duties with technical support roles or even customer service, but switching tasks is especially disruptive to the focus required to create software. If a programmer’s duties cannot be dedicated to programming, at least help to arrange the programmer’s schedule and coworker expectations to include as many weekdays of uninterrupted programming as possible. One common challenge institutions face is the process of recruiting and hiring programmers. Often salary is an issue, as libraries often find themselves unable to compete dollar-for-dollar with private businesses when it comes to developer salaries. Talented programmers are always in high demand, but libraries have a unique ideological advantage in recruiting programmers who share library values. Generally speaking, the mission of libraries is attractive to talented programmers. You may find specific advantages unique to your institution as well. If you are an academic institution, try to hire programmers who want to work on an advanced degree or seek stability. If you are a library with a specific focus, try to find developers who are interested in your institution’s focus. Often programmers will choose a career path that offers personal growth toward their desired goals. Regarding the qualifications for programmer candidates, demonstrating a capacity for learning on the job is the most important. But to find the best fit, you should prepare before the interview process begins. Know what technologies your institutions use the most and where you would like to head. For example, is your library website written in php, ASP.NET, Python, or something else entirely? Try to have actual programmers present for your interview process. If your institution doesn’t have any on staff, ask around and borrow one for the interviews. It’s not necessary to have a code review or for the programmer to ask industry-specific questions, but having another programmer present to help parse the answers of potential candidates and to offer advice on the quality of candidate responses is worth the hassle.

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Source control Next, the value of source control for software development projects cannot be underestimated. The process of source control ensures that changes to software code are regularly tracked in a central location. This can be done in the most rudimentary way of copying all development files into dated folders on another machine, but using special software with its own code repository is far superior. The particular method of source control does not matter so much as the regular use of source control by all members of the programming team. A weekly code check-in should be viewed as the minimum acceptable standard. The particular implementation can be selected from any of the popular platforms such as Subversion, Git, etc.; the choice does not matter much as long as it is standardized across the institution. The benefits reaped from using source control include disaster recovery, easy review of work done by the team, and the peace of mind that comes from knowing that progress cannot be lost.

Project planning Software development projects can spiral out of control if proper project planning does not occur at the outset, if the planning is sloppy, or if the plan is not reviewed and adhered to throughout the life of the project. The most common disaster for software development is scope creep, where a project starts out with an original set of goals but is tacitly or even explicitly grown to a much larger set of desired outcomes, often after the project has already progressed beyond a point where adding the new goals is easy or even possible. Specifying the desired features of a software product before starting a single line of code is important precisely to prevent scope creep in a project, which all but ensures its completion in a timely manner. One popular way of managing scope creep comes from the world of agile development: user stories.These can be particularly helpful in a library setting, because libraries are already community-minded institutions which consider the needs of their patrons. The point of user stories is to imagine the finished application as it will be used by all the different types of people who will use it. The general format of a user story follows this pattern: As a , I want , so that . A sample user story might read as follows: “As a college professor, I want to be able to generate a short hyperlink directly to a course reserve item held at the library, so that I can easily share important course resources with my

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students on a paper syllabus or via email.” Note that detailed descriptions are preferred to vague, generic stories. To complete the user story, add a meaningful title, the name of the team member or stakeholder who wrote the story, and a priority of the story on a scale of 1 (optional) to 5 (essential). A software development project will have dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of user stories. Each project’s user stories can be listed in a spreadsheet, using a fresh template for each new project. Resist the temptation to recycle the same user stories for each project; they should not be generic enough to be reused. Specificity demonstrates that enough consideration has been provided to prevent scope creep. Implementing user stories communicates the goals of the project clearly to the project stakeholders and to the staff who will be designing the solution. Tracking important dates for a project should be done at the outset as well. Estimating the time required for software projects is very difficult, but make an effort anyway. Take into account hard deadlines outside of anyone’s control, for example, academic calendar dates at institutions of higher learning. Specify how frequently meetings will occur and how long these meetings should last. Who is responsible for attending each kind of meeting? Who evaluates the progress of the project, and when do they do so? Answering these questions in the beginning is essential. Any tracking system for the project should include these dates, and management should review this information at least weekly. Another important project planning piece is determining how the success of the project will be assessed. Assessment is typically considered after the project is complete and already being used, but this is a mistake. Planning for the project assessment at the outset will make the development smoother throughout, and the advance assessment planning will make it easier to demonstrate the value of the project once it is up and running. Furthermore, assessment can mean more than just views of a webpage, or visitor counts, or items lent out. Consider assessing the impact on the community, gathering pre- and postproject qualitative surveys. Are there users who could ­provide a good narrative story of the finished product used for its intended purpose? Planning for the hard-to-quantify types of assessment before the project begins can greatly increase the chance of its success later.

Regular communication Regular communication is the final essential piece for successful programming teams. Communication within the team and communication with

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stakeholders are equally important. Within the team, daily communication is a must. A brief in-person conversation about daily work can go a long way to enhance productivity without micromanaging.The timing of such a conversation should not interfere with productive blocks of time. For example, if your team has a morning person who likes to arrive at the office early and get right to work, by all means let them and schedule your talk for after their burst of productivity. The main goal of these brief conversations is the identification of major roadblocks and the setting of expectations. Various electronic methods for intrateam communication can boost productivity as well. At a minimum, an email distribution list for the development team can be used for internal communication. Internal email lists are also handy for documenting information that the team may need to share, such as website URLs, API keys, and so forth. However, a dedicated and encrypted password storage program such as Keepass is better for storing passwords. Leaving sensitive information in plain-text emails is not a best practice. In addition to email, instant messaging programs can be quick ways to resolve obstacles that come up during the day. Microsoft Lync (now Skype for Business), Google Chat, and Slack are all excellent options for development teams to coordinate their work and to help each other solve problems throughout the day. Be careful not to interrupt flow by overusing any of these tools, as concentration over periods of focused work is how real programming gets done. Also, programmers will appreciate clear boundaries for instant messaging and email, such as an expectation not to be overwhelmed with contacts during periods of intense focus or to be bothered outside of work hours.

Prioritizing library technology projects We see some emerging technologies and ways to spot them, and we have an idea of how to form a team of developers to implement them. But how do we prioritize these projects? Identifying which projects should receive the most time and energy is always a challenge. Implementing the project planning ideas described earlier should help with this prioritization. Clearly defined projects with accurate and compelling user stories are easier to prioritize. The focus of your institution will also help to determine the priority order. Librarians and programmers work most harmoniously when librarians are able to paint a clear picture using the project planning best practices. Librarians can use their expertise in their area of specialization to communicate ideas clearly to programmers who can produce the products

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that they need. Administrators should be aware of the projects underway at their institutions and be able to suggest which ones match the strengths and mission of the institution the most. The importance of prioritizing projects cannot be overstated. Sometimes compelling projects are completed only to realize that they weren’t really necessary in the first place. The world is full of software development project prioritization gone awry. For one example, a library development team created an event calendar from scratch, only to have a third-party event calendar purchased instead. The team of programmers was demoralized to discover that their work was unnecessary. Another example comes from a library who went through three website content management systems in two years. Their librarians and other content creators were worn out from having to redo their content in a new system, only to have to redo it soon after. Whatever the unique opportunities and challenges are at your institution, there are several broader technological trends that are worth embracing in whichever way your institution chooses to embody them.We have explored several of them in this chapter, including mobile-first design, responsive design, data as a service, digitization, big data, and 3D printing. We have discussed some best practices for building a team of developers and diving into software development projects. Now we will explore a case study of IDS Logic, which embodies many cutting-edge technologies as well as superior project planning and execution in pursuit of library-driven goals. Source: Kenny Ketner, State of Montana Libraries

2.2 CASE STUDY: IDS LOGIC The Information Delivery Services (IDS) Project represents an innovative model of library cooperation for effective resource sharing. Through the promotion of community engagement, staff development, best practices, and research and development, IDS has developed into a cooperative of over 100 libraries across the United States over the course of 13 years. One of the main reasons for the creation of the IDS Project was the increased cost of purchasing materials. Prices for both physical and digital materials continue to grow and outpace the shrinking financial resources of libraries. By freely sharing materials, libraries are able to increase the resources available to their patrons without the high costs of acquisition and retainment of items. IDS Project libraries abide by the maxim that “my library is your library and your library is my library.”

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IDS was originally born out of the frustration of 12 New York State academic library directors who admitted to each other that there were only two choices for 21st century libraries: (1) to radically change the way they do business with each other, or (2) to accept the fact that they would fail to meet the needs of current and future library users. Opting to radically change the way they did business and focus on collaboration, the libraries began working on ways to improve resource-sharing services. The first tool developed was a statistics module. IDS linked each of the 12 libraries’ ILLiad SQL servers to a primary SQL server at the State University of New York (SUNY) Geneseo’s Milne Library. This allowed IDS to develop a Transaction Performance Analysis tool. Each library was able to see how the entire cooperative was doing from a project-wide perspective all the way down to a single transaction between two libraries. This was the first time that one library could see performance measures for all of the processing steps for both borrowing and lending sides of a transaction. The second tool helped with access to electronic journal articles.While access to physical materials owned by each library was fairly straightforward, by searching local catalogs or making ILL requests through OCLC, e-journal holdings were not easily discoverable beyond local libraries.This was complicated by the fact that each library needed to research all of their own licenses to determine which resources were available for ILL. All of these obstacles made lending electronic articles almost impossible. IDS developed the Article License Information Availability Service (ALIAS) in order to provide both generic license information and holdings information for each library. IDS worked with Atlas Systems in their development of an ILLiad Service for ALIAS to link the two systems together. Article requests filled within IDS more than doubled once the new system was in place. The third tool provided a better search interface for all IDS libraries. IDS Search is a union catalog that can change its search range from a single library, to a group of libraries, and up to a full search of all OCLC libraries. While IDS Search is not used by all IDS libraries, the libraries that have chosen to use it swear by it as the best resource sharing focused discovery tool available. While technology has been a strong suit of IDS, there has always been a strong sense of community contributing to the foundation and success of the consortia. Toward that end, we identified the need for a group of highly trained individuals who could work with IDS libraries to improve their

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turnaround times and quality of service. The IDS Mentor Program was developed in 2008 and continues to grow and transform. One example of that transformation is the move from paper-based materials and face-toface training to the creation of an Online Mentor Institute available to train new mentors from libraries across the nation, matching the expanding needs of IDS. The project’s efforts were recognized in 2008 with IDS becoming the recipient of the Rethinking Resource Sharing Innovation Award for the first time. IDS also released the Workflow Toolkit, a collection of workflow best practices, so all libraries would have a set of best practices and instructions on how to implement them regardless of whether or not they were in the IDS Project. A new version of a more dynamic and accessible Workflow Toolkit is in development using the power of Springshare’s LibAnswers product. This version will be more of a living document since any support requests or questions submitted will become part of the Workflow Toolkit. Additionally, we are implementing a reference chat feature. This will allow our community of members to interact with mentors in real-time about issues and get immediate feedback. This idea of “Mentor Office Hours” is meant to spread the knowledge and accessibility of the mentors in such a way that IDS members can plan updates, workflow changes, questions, etc. during these office hours, knowing they will be able to reach a mentor and move forward with their needs or projects. The Regional User Group (RUG) meetings were created in 2012 as the project membership began to climb. The state was broken up into three regions: Western, Eastern, and Metro. Bi-annual meetings were planned with Mark Sullivan, Bill Jones, and the mentors. They were designed to provide professional development, promotion of best practices, and enhance the sense of community. The meetings allow interlibrary loan staff to participate in hands-on workshops, learn about ILLiad updates, learn about new technology, facilitate discussion, and solve problems. The RUGs received the Rethinking Resource Sharing Innovation Award in 2013. Another highly collaborative IDS initiative is the Online Learning Institute (OLI). OLI is an online based environment which strives to combine partnerships from across the country to provide community based resource-sharing training on a regular basis. Courses began with three foundational focuses in order to support new practitioners in learning what they need to know to effectively process Borrowing, Lending, and Copyright. Recently, the instructor team has grown to include experts able to provide higher level courses

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focused on Statistics and Assessment, Purchase on Demand, and Workflow Analysis. Instructors are recognized experts and leaders in resource sharing, offering their knowledge and time to develop their larger community of colleagues. Courses are free and offered three times a year.They are capped at 30 students to allow for engagement with each other in a community building effort, directly aligning with one of IDS’s key cornerstones. OLI is constantly full and looking for ways to continue integrating the resource-sharing community at a higher level beyond day-to-day processing. OLI won the Rethinking Resource Sharing Award at ALA Annual 2016. Most recently, IDS has been developing a new platform, called IDS Logic, a server-level add-on that connects library systems to better empower staff and improve services to patrons. One of the main motivations for IDS Logic was the elimination of repetitious tasks. By reducing the time each staff member has to spend doing something that could be automated, more time can be spent on more challenging requests. For some libraries, the savings amounted to a few hours per week. For others, time savings was significantly more with up to 20 hours per week! This time savings allowed libraries to focus on additional services libraries are attempting to offer, many of which integrate with resource sharing; for example Patron Driven Acquisitions, Open Educational Resources, Shared Print initiatives, and publishing. Logic has received many compliments over the past year: I love that it cuts down on the amount of requests we had to sift through. The few small details to be worked out are nowhere near as time-consuming as looking up all the call numbers and availability manually. It has really cut down the time and energy that goes into Awaiting Lending Request Processing each day and has streamlined our workflow.

IDS Logic has proven transformative in how staff and departments process ILL requests. People have become used to processing requests manually, even when using highly customizable and efficient software such as ILLiad. IDS Logic can eliminate many manual steps, or nonvalue added “touches,” and makes enhanced data available to staff for each request. This allows staff more time to work on other requests that are not easily automated. A good example of an automation created to eliminate a nonvalue “touch” of a request is the call number, location, and availability lookup process for loans that can be automatically applied and made ready for printing. Currently IDS Logic is available for ILLiad only, but has been developed to be extensible so that integration with other systems can happen quickly. We are looking to expand the number of ILL systems that will work with IDS Logic during the coming year (Fig. 2.1).

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Figure 2.1  IDS logic.

The primary goal of IDS Logic implementation is to allow libraries to install and utilize the technology without staff needing more than a basic knowledge of ILLiad’s Customization Manager and general workflows. The configuration of Logic can be accomplished quickly or in stages, depending on how the library would like to proceed. Currently, there are 115 libraries using IDS Logic and it has become a vital part of processing interlibrary loan requests. Services provided by this platform range from automatically sending important messages to users to leveraging inventory control systems and increasing the speed of delivery for patron requests. The most heavily used Logic module to date is Lending Availability Service, which determines the availability of physical materials and automatically imports call number, shelving location, item ID, and additional information contained within the MaRC record that a library finds useful. Another module of Logic that is now rapidly being developed and implemented is the Article Gateway system. This system provides libraries with the ability to automate much of the borrowing article process, which is the part of the ILL workflow that most requires staff intervention and attention due to a variety of decisions about copyright, article purchasing, and the need to modify citations. Article Gateway, now in use at over 20 libraries, automates copyright clearance dynamically with no staff intervention, standardizes and completes citation information, and checks the least

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Figure 2.2  Article gateway system.

expensive purchase or borrow option. This frees article requests from manual staff processing and has proven to significantly decrease average turnaround time (typically by over 25%), and to significantly increase the number of articles delivered within a few hours. All this is achieved with less staff time, and the patron sees better service. Article Gateway, using IDS Logic, pulls information from multiple web services and interacts with the ILL system to reduce staff time and improve the resource-sharing patron experience (Fig. 2.2). IDS Project has grown over the years almost entirely by word of mouth. The IDS Mentor staff and engaged volunteers have traveled to conferences, such as the ILLiad Conference inVirginia Beach, Northwest ILL Conference in Oregon, and so many more, presenting on different services and opportunities to engage with the resource sharing that IDS offers. Occasionally, we have supported other conferences through sponsorships and purchasing exhibitor tables, giving us further opportunity to introduce our community to new people while touching base with our current membership. We also

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have our own conference each summer that is well attended by members of IDS and wider resource-sharing communities. The IDS Project values its members and is focused on its mission “to be an innovative model of library cooperation for effective resource sharing through the promotion of community engagement, staff development, best practices, and research and development.” Source: Mark Sullivan, Executive Director, IDS Project; Jennifer Acker, Senior Clerk, Hudson Valley Community College; Shannon Pritting, Library Director, SUNY Polytechnic Institute; Micquel Little, Director of User Services and Resource Sharing, Claremont Colleges Library; Beth Posner, Head of Library Resource Sharing,The Graduate Center, CUNY; Nancy Abashian, Head of Reader Services and Resource Sharing, Binghamton University Libraries; Bill Jones, IDS Project Creative Technologist at SUNY Geneseo Milne Library

2.3 CASE STUDY: TRANS-TASMAN INTERLENDING Prior to online systems, the New Zealand national interloans service was operated using a card-based National Union Catalogue (NUC). Request cards with an item’s bibliographic information were posted to libraries around the country, until a supplier for it was found. In 1982, the NUC was moved online and became the New Zealand Bibliographic Network (NZBN). From 1999, the national libraries of both New Zealand and Australia decided to separately implement and oversee a web-based ILL management system.They chose Virtual Document eXchange (VDX), an ISO 10160/10161 protocol-compliant interlibrary loan product, from Fretwell Downing. In Australia it was branded “Kinetica” – then, “Libraries Australia Document Delivery (LADD)”; in New Zealand it was named “Te Puna Interloan” (Te Puna is a Māori term meaning “The spring/source of water”). Both national libraries offered this service to any subscribed member library in their country. Most libraries in both countries, whether public, small, specialized, or academic, subscribed to the service: over 700 in Australia, and 235 in New Zealand. By joining either Te Puna Interloan, or Libraries Australia, libraries also sign up to and agreed on general expectations such as turnaround times, recommended charging, and standards of service. Libraries can, for an annual fee subscribe to Te Puna Interloan via the National Library of New Zealand, or to Libraries Australia through the National Library of Australia. In New Zealand, this grants a library access to

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the National Library-supported version of VDX. In New Zealand, a library must first join the New Zealand Interloan Scheme, for a fee, then join Te Puna Interloan membership. Te Puna membership through the National Library, through which a library gains access to VDX, also enables libraries to access other services such as catalog and MARC bibliographic records. Working together, these two countries also established the “TransTasman Gateway” in March 2006 (“Tasman” refers to the sea that separates them). By joining the two networks together under one “umbrella” gateway, it allowed ILL transactions to be requested, supplied, and tracked through just one interactive system, rather than two standalone ones. Trans-Tasman Interlending has also meant aligning of practices like charging levels for interloan transactions between the two countries. The gateway provides a centralized billing and reconciliation service. Libraries could also now track requests online, in the one interface, and action tasks such as loan renewals, and upload scanned PDFs to the ILL network. Libraries using the gateway can access bibliographic records of library holdings in both countries in one simultaneous search, as the z39.50 protocol was employed to allow this. A search in Te Puna Interloan will bring up New Zealand holdings first, and vice versa, so that requests can be made from holdings in the closest geographical locations (Ong et al., 2007). Today, libraries across both countries either subscribe to a national utility such as Te Puna Interloan, or employ their own ISO ILL product to link into the network available using the gateway. Besides VDX, now owned by OCLC, two other alternative products in use are Relais and Ex-Libris Alma/Aleph. The National Library of Australia and the University of Canberra Library are examples using Relais—the majority, however, do still use VDX. Hence, the New Zealand and Australian resource-sharing environment has become a complex mix of systems that for the most part, do link in together well. For the FY2014–2015, 12% of requests made by libraries in New Zealand were fulfilled by Australian libraries via Trans-Tasman Interlending. In that period, New Zealand libraries requested 10,572 items from across the Tasman, while Australia requested 6740 items from NZ libraries (Foran, 2015). A user group, VDX Users Group in Australia and New Zealand (VUGANZ), was set up in 2000 to provide support among members. Both LADD and Te Puna Interloan operate services such as online or in-person training, and mailing lists, to ensure the ongoing success of the Trans-Tasman interloan service.

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A group of major New Zealand University Libraries also joined together in 2010 to purchase a separate subscription to a later version of VDX, than that available through Te Puna Interloan at that time. Hosted and supported by OCLC, this version offers unmediated requesting and greater patron autonomy. The “ZPortal” interface allows patrons to place requests directly into the ILL management system, and where possible have them route out automatically to another library to fill, without staff intervention. These University Libraries in New Zealand, now operating a VDX service independent to the National Library’s Te Puna Interloan, include Auckland University of Technology; Canterbury, Massey, Victoria, and Otago Universities; and separately, the Auckland University Library through their own subscription. All libraries still connect to and participate in the wider Te Puna Interloan and Libraries Australia networks. As of 2016, only one New Zealand library is still using the unmediated function. Libraries in New Zealand are interested in revisiting this concept in the future as the technology matures to enable this more seamlessly. In 2013 the National Library’s Te Puna Interloan also moved to a hosted managed service with OCLC, with servers housed in Dublin, Ohio, and technical support offered out of the Melbourne OCLC office. Te Puna Support Consultants still offer day-to-day support of Te Puna Interloan to New Zealand libraries (Foran, 2015). OCLC’s VDX product is being supported, but no longer developed. Libraries that still utilize this product, including the National Library of New Zealand, will need to find a new solution in the coming years. OCLC has done some work with a view to eventually migrate their VDX product to WorldShare ILL, but any future solution will need to negotiate around some unique aspects of the New Zealand-Australian interlibrary loan environment, such as the automatic Interloan Billing Service (IBS) billing set up via the Trans-Tasman Gateway between NZ’s Te Puna Interloan, and Libraries Australia.

VDX requesting in New Zealand The LIANZA (Library and Information Association of New Zealand Aotearoa) guidelines for NZ libraries requires a library to dispatch within 72 hours, or if not possible, at least respond within 48 hours. Turnaround times in New Zealand average out at 2.6 days for loans, and 2.0 days for copies (Foran, 2015). The VDX system allows libraries to “suspend” their availability as a supplier, for periods such as holiday breaks. The Library at Canterbury

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University in New Zealand was able to use this function to block all incoming requests for supply for some months, in the wake of earthquakes that occurred in 2010/2011, when much of their physical collection was inaccessible. The system also allows PDFs of articles or chapters to be uploaded and “attached” to a live request in the VDX system, as long as copyright allows. This sends a document direct to the patron’s ZPortal account, saving time in the workflow. VDX’s “send user alert” function also allows the emailing to patrons of an URL address with temporary login. The VDX system is also set up to recognize a copyright breach where a third article is requested from the same journal issue at the same time.

Charging for interloans Most libraries across the gateway have stuck to a system-wide NZ$14.00 minimum charge for the supply of interloan material. Some libraries have increased their charges in recent years, but this is still the exception. There is also an agreed minimum NZ$34.00 cost of “urgent” interloans (same or next day delivery for loans). The New Zealand Copyright Act (1994, s51(2)b) legislated that libraries could charge for an interloan no more than the sum consisting of the total of the cost of production of an interloan and a reasonable contribution to the general expenses of the library. Most New Zealand libraries do still charge for interloan services, although most health/medical libraries agree to provide interloans to each other at no charge. The IBS is a centralized billing system that supports charging for national (IBS) and trans-Tasman (IIBS) interloans. All payments for interloans supplied and received are automatically credited or debited to member libraries (Foran, 2015). This frees libraries from processing multiple invoices, similar to WorldShare’s IFM billing system.

New Zealand: some trends and developments Over the last 20 years interloans transactions to and from libraries have seen a general decline in New Zealand, although that decline has slowed and possibly plateaued in recent years (Reid, 2011; Foran, 2015). Like most countries, New Zealand libraries have increased purchasing of online books and journals, and some out-of-copyright works can now be found freely available through sites such as the Internet Archive.

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However, interloan is still needed as some works cannot be found online for free or for purchase. University Libraries of Australia and New Zealand (ULANZ) have since 2013 participated in a scheme where any student of any tertiary institution can be provided with walk-in access to print material. Access to e-material and databases is not possible as publisher agreements tend to restrict access to staff or students of the home institution only. The University of Canterbury Library also participates in the regional consortia Canterbury Tertiary Alliance (CTA), with the two other tertiary providers in the region, Lincoln University and Ara Institute of Technology. One relatively recent reciprocal set up, is BONUS+ (print book lending) and ArticleReach (scanning of chapter/articles). It is a primarily Australian tertiary library scheme, but two New Zealand libraries, Massey University, and Auckland University of Technology, have now joined. All participating libraries must subscribe to the Millenium Library Management System, as books are checked out in a module of this system. Patrons at each member library can place their own requests, which are sent unmediated to a holding library the system identifies. Another benefit is that each library in the scheme imposes no charges for lending. Another recent development was the move of New Zealand’s NUC to being integrated into OCLC’s WorldShare platform in 2016. Prior to that, it had been hosted and managed by the National Library. Source: Noho ora mai rā, nā Sue Thompson, University of Canterbury

REFERENCES Copyright Act, 1994. Section 51(2)b. Foran, K., 2015. New Zealand Interloan Services Trends 2005–2015 and Beyond: A Report. Wellington, New Zealand. Ong, D., Reid, D., Simons, N., 2007. Taming the Tasman: international interlending under the Southern Cross. Interlending & Document Supply 35, 38–44. Reid, D., 2011. Shaken and stirred: New Zealand’s interlending scene. Interlending & Document Supply 39, 94–100.

FURTHER READING Hanington, D., Reid, D., 2010. Now we’re getting somewhere – adventures in trans-Tasman interlending. Interlending & Document Supply 38, 76–81. Jilovsky, C., Howells, S., 2012. Light at the end of the tunnel: transitioning from one interlending system to another. Interlending & Document Supply 40, 19–25.

CHAPTER 3

Resources Anytime, Anywhere OVERVIEW In the previous chapter we discussed in detail the types of technological developments that have been seen in libraries and how those have changed the way patrons view and interact with the library in general and interlibrary loan in particular. One of the most important areas where there has been dramatic change is in how resource sharing is conducted between consortia. As technological developments increase the interconnectedness between libraries within a consortium becomes more and more complex. The increase in complexity allows for an increase in functionality as well. As we will see in the case studies, patrons are able to discover items held at another institution and place requests for those items seamlessly from within a shared consortial discovery layers. That type of interconnectedness has changed the ways in which consortia develop, interact, and function. These new types of consortia arise as libraries embrace resource sharing models and evolve from the interlibrary loan model. Consortia are groups of libraries that come together to meet a common need. As defined by the US Code of Federal Regulations a library consortium is “any local, statewide, regional, or interstate cooperative association of libraries that provides for the systematic and effective coordination of the resources of schools, public, academic, and special libraries and information centers, for improving services to the clientele of such libraries. (47 CFR 54.500).” While very general the code forms the basis of the relationship libraries have between each other in the United States. Valerie Horton in her chapter Library Consortia Overview (2015) further expands this definition by explaining that library consortia have four basic functions. Those functions are, • Resource Sharing, Interlibrary Loan, Online and Physical delivery • Shared Offsite storage, cooperative collection development, serials exchange coordination, shared e-book collections • Shared integrated library systems, technology and networking support and service, internet service provider • Digitization programs and hosting digital assets, institutional repositories Horton (2015, p. 3) Resources Anytime, Anywhere ISBN 978-0-08-101989-4 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-101989-4.00003-1

Copyright © 2017 Ryan Litsey. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Horton’s description in the opening parts of the book Library Consortia: Models for Collaboration and Sustainability (2015) demonstrates two important concepts in the evolution of the consortia and how the idea of resource sharing has evolved the concept. First, consortia in the traditional sense applies mostly to “systematic and effective coordination.” This originally meant the development of union catalogs. From union catalogs, though, the ability to share items becomes easier. Meaning, consortia in the interlibrary loan period could coordinate requests and offer centralization of information. Places like the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) and early consortia provided a medium of exchange in the interlibrary loan process: a centralized place where libraries could agree on what items they were looking for from one another. However, as we have seen throughout the book, as technology reshapes the way libraries think and function so has it reshaped the understanding of the role of the consortia in the resource-sharing process. The second key concept is “improving services to the clientele.” Improvement of services is the key impetus for the systematic organization. As will be discussed later in the chapter, as technology puts increasing pressures on the library consortia, what developments are new models of interaction and collective problem solving that have not been seen previously. To illustrate this evolution an examination of some of the early discussions surrounding consortia is appropriate. One of the key pieces of literature that discusses early consortia is an article by David Weber (1976). In this article the author begins by describing the historical narrative surrounding consortia. For Weber the first library cooperative units were centered around consistent cataloging and were formed in 1876. By 1907 the Library of Congress had issued the first interlibrary loan policies. What is interesting with the initial discussions around consortia or cooperative library networks is that they evolved outside or independent of the notion of sharing between libraries. The initial purpose was a shared cataloging endeavor, that is clear also in the ways in which many of the more overarching consortia have developed through the years. For example, the Ohio, College, Library, Center which was the original designation for the now ubiquitously known OCLC, which started out as an endeavor to create a shared computerized catalog system. From shared cataloging the ideas around sharing those resources begin to develop. According to Weber (1976) the sharing of items came as a result of the

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increasing interconnections between libraries in an endeavor to create large shared catalogs. Weber writes, Yet if one looks ahead ten years, the college student of 1986 may well find at least 10 percent of all bibliographic citations of the library collections in machine readable form accessible through a computer terminal; in some instances it may reach 100 percent. It is certain to include all of the more heavily used materials. The student will also be able via the terminal to call upon collections in other libraries, locally and nationally, and have instantaneous loan transactions, only constrained by copyright controls on photocopying and limited by telefacsimile or by the remaining need to send the text by air parcel post. Weber (1976, p. 219)

Weber’s prophetic statement is a very telling example of how interlibrary loan has developed from the interconnectedness of libraries. As libraries begin to coordinate their catalogs the questions of sharing start to creep in. Other authors have addressed these concepts as well. In thinking about the future as Weber (1976) described it, it is easy to see that much of his description has come to be. Edward Shreeves (1997) in writing about the future of cooperative collection development in the digital age alludes to the changes Weber (1976) foresaw. For Shreeves (1997) the development of shared bibliographic records in the form of computer based catalogs has radically changed the ways libraries are able to share the resources they have. Furthermore, he argues much in line with a central argument of this book that libraries must rethink what is understood as a resources as a result of the evolution of shared collection development. Shreeves writes, Most would define the ‘resources’ of resource sharing to be the information resources typically collected by libraries and made available under certain conditions to users not traditionally a part of the owning library’s clientele. Later discussion will suggest that the concept of the resources to be shared in the new electronic environment needs to be broadened to include human and computing resources, among others. Shreeves (1997, p. 394)

Resource sharing then becomes the description of a tripartite system for Shreeves. This system is bibliographic access, interlibrary loan, and cooperative collection development—the notion that interlibrary loan is part of a larger system that has been irreparably altered by the influence of technology. Shreeves (1997) continues to highlight some key concepts in the transformative nature of resource sharing. He argues that for this transformation to be successful we must limit the time from request to supply.To accomplish this many interlibrary loan units, utilize unmediated

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request systems that are handled through the z39.50 catalogs that are part of a library’s Integrated Library System (ILS). Taking advantage of this Shreeves (1997) rightly identifies a way of connecting remotely to a catalog and searching for availability. The interesting aspect of the Shreeves (1997) piece is the discussion on cooperative collection development. The transformation of cooperative collection development and cooperative licensing negotiations is an important aspects and one that shifts the concept of interlibrary loan more toward resource sharing. For example, imagine a situation where a consortium attempts a cooperative collection development but is unable to realize the potential. From there the cooperative nature of the consortia is not leveraged into a more focused collective bargaining position. Working with journals and publishers to achieve collective goals for the cost of journal subscriptions. This leads to an emphasis then among the consortia for a greater role in interlibrary loan to provide access of materials owned within the larger group. Shreeves (1997) echoes this example in the closing sentences of the piece. He writes,“Certainly, the focus on collective action to help build, exploit, and manage the digital environment could bring measurable and meaningful results” (Shreeves, 1997, p. 389). The Shreeves (1997) piece illustrates further the ways in which technology has changed how libraries think of interlibrary loan. Both in terms of what is loaned and also in terms of the role is plays in the library in general. As cooperative collection development becomes collective action, the need for sharing these items becomes greater and greater. The increase then puts pressure on the methods and ways in which libraries think of interlibrary loan and how they can construct systems to meet the growing information need. Further in the same issue of Library Trends, William Gary Potter (1997) illustrates how systems of sharing have developed on a state level. There are numerous examples of state-level consortia. Potter (1997, p. 433) writes, “In the creation of electronic libraries, a principal value of statewide consortia comes in license negotiations. The consortia bring considerable leverage because of the number of libraries involved, the number of users represented, and the fact that funding is available.” The need for consortia to be involved in collective bargaining becomes increasingly important as we will see later. For Potter (1997), though, the consortia serve three functions. Those functions are access to union catalogs, access to the worldwide web, and access to electronic resources. What is interesting here is we can start to see the evolution of resource sharing out from under the shade of interlibrary loan even in these basic functions of the consortia. One could argue that as technology has developed and changed the way libraries interact

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these basic functions will evolve as well, which means that the current versions of consortia we see today may not be similar in function to how they originally developed.The importance of understanding contemporary consortia as being a reflection of the evolution of resource sharing from interlibrary loan cannot be overlooked. Barbara Allen and Arnold Hirshon (1998) also addressed the beginnings of a change within consortia. Allen and Hirshon (1998) discuss the disruption in the shared cataloging model that technology has brought to library consortia. The authors argue that “new” consortia develop for three reasons: first, leverage resources by sharing existing collections; second, reduce the cost of member library operations; and finally, to affect the future of how information will be created. In comparing these reasons to the one mentioned Potter above there is a clear shift in how library consortia are conceptualized. In Potter’s description there are shared union catalogs and access to the worldwide web. In the Allen and Hirshon description, access to the Internet is assumed. The shared catalogs are either already in existence or are not needed. The one that is consistent between the two is access to electronic information, either directly as in the Potter description or indirectly through influence as in the Allen and Hirshon description. Allen and Hirshon (1998, p. 43) close with some advice for consortia; they write, “It is important that library c­ onsortia thrive as more than simple buying clubs.The potential exists for consortia to establish themselves as critical tools for entirely new ways of conceiving and delivering library services.” Even within the space of these two articles a shift is emerging. No longer are union catalogs a priority; the technology of discovery has altered the need for a union catalog. What is emerging is the growth of the electronic medium and a place where resources are provided. As a byproduct, then, we see the beginnings of the need to influence and deliver this new type of content to library users. Also, with the rise of the electronic resource comes a need to further focus on delivery of items, a concept discussed by Valerie Horton (2015) in her four functions of a consortia. Nfila and DarkoAmpem (2002) also address the factors of a contemporary consortia. For Nfila and Darko-Ampem (2002) the main motivating factor for the increase in the number of consortia in the late eighties and early nineties was the proliferation of published materials. As journal articles moved to an electronic presentation the ability to publish more often dramatically increased. With this increase comes the catch 22 of libraries attempting to gain access to these items. Since a library for a variety of reasons, budget being the main one, cannot keep pace with the publications they need to look toward cooperative systems to help. That leads to a greater

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emphasis on consortia. Indeed, in the decade of the seventies and eighties there was nearly a doubling in the number of consortia at work in the library world. The increase in the number of consortia around the time we see the emergence of the technological influence cannot be overlooked. The authors further discuss the importance of technology as an influencing factor in the emergence of resource sharing rather than interlibrary loan. This is another interesting turn of phrase. In this article the discussion begins with the idea that interlibrary loan was one of the motivating factors in early consortia development. However, in the contemporary resource sharing environment, not only has interlibrary loan changed by the nature of consortia and their influence on resource sharing have evolved as well. The authors write, Library consortia, or co-operative ventures, have grown from the peripheral and limited position of resource sharing to an integrated system wide resource sharing. This has been made possible by developments in electronic access. Academic libraries now have an improved access to catalogue information that reflects holdings of man individual libraries. In addition, electronic access enables customers to initiate their own search of remote catalogues and make requests for information. Nfila and Darko-Ampem (2002, p. 210)

This quote is an excellent synopsis of the type of transformation that has happened within consortia as technology in libraries continues to develop. The consortia once the place where libraries could work together to develop a shared system of organizing books has evolved into an arena in which libraries interact with each other. A series of network information systems that seek to provide resources or seek to negotiate for resources. What is also interesting about this quote is the notion that there is a transformation with the idea of resource sharing. The authors describe resource sharing as being part of the large cooperative venture. However, at the close of the sentence resource sharing has emerged from within into a systemwide effort to provide resources. The other interesting aspect of this quote is the idea of user-initiated requests and user initiated searches. As we will see later in the case studies this seems to be one of the main directions consortia have evolved in. The evolution of the consortia is echoed as well by Ralph Alberico (2002). Alberico (2002) writes concerning the academic library consortia in transition. In this book chapter the author focuses of the evolution of the Virtual Library of Virginia (VIVA) consortia, which is a consortium of virtual library for the academic libraries of Virginia. This article highlights the continued growth of the electronic format of resource collection. The key takeaway from this chapter is the description of the shared discover and

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transparency of records. As consortia continue to evolve there will be an increased need on the discovery of the resources held by different institutions. However, this concept is different from the previous discussion of a shared union catalog. These types of contemporary consortial activities do not represent a shared union catalog. Rather, they represent the presentation of a discovery layer that is accessible on the consortia level of the items located at the different member libraries. In the examination of the literature above we can see the evolution of the academic library consortia. Beginning with quotes from Melville Dewey himself, libraries joined together to broad accomplish cooperative problems Things like centralized union catalogs or centralized recording of records. This is critical when items are geographically dispersed and collections cannot be compared to one another. From there the development of electronic card cataloging makes the centralization of the union catalog much easier and we can see the first moments of interlibrary loan. Then in the late eighties to early nineties we see an explosion in the number of active consortia in the United States. The explosion comes from the growth and development of technological methods of cataloging and communications. The consortia now are able to communicate and interact in ways that were not possible before.The consortia spurred by declining budgets and rapidly increasing numbers of publications begins to take on new processes and functions. They begin to work a collective bargaining units that are attempting to keep costs of electronic journals and other electronic resources low while at the same time seeking to increase the sharing of these items through the interlibrary loan networks. However, as electronic resources increase the ability to discover, access, and request, these resources increases as well. This leads to a change in perception of the library user. If they are able to access local electronically available items in an instant, why not be able to access electronically available items that are offsite in an instant as well? There is a growing need for specialization since collective cataloging is less needed. This brings about the new type of consortia that serve resources sharing and not interlibrary loan. The new consortia models developed from within the traditional. Whereas in the past interlibrary loan is one small part of the large whole, it has now been moved to the forefront. As consortia begin to move into a resource sharing model we see the emergence of not one but two different types of consortia. The first type is what we will call the collective bargaining consortia or as it is called in other parts of the literature a “buyer club.” The second, is supply-side consortia. Both of these types of consortia can vary from each other and have developed from the influence of technology on the ideas of what a consortium does for the academic library.

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THE COLLECTIVE BARGAINING CONSORTIA The first type the collective bargaining consortia does exactly that. This is a consortium that is organized to help advocate for favorable contracts or to serve as a negotiating body for a group of libraries. This is the most common type of consortia. This does not mean that the sole activity for a consortium like this is merely bargaining. A consortium of this type will also engage in favorable negotiation for resource sharing, meaning they will likely set up a system that includes some sort of reciprocal lending, etc. A consortium like this will also likely have some other types of access. Given that the collective bargaining does have its benefits these types of consortia will also have large virtual libraries or other types of communal resources. The collective bargaining consortia has evolved from the remnants of the more traditional consortial activities. As mentioned previously these are the more common type of consortia. The large state-organized entities, the regional academic consortia, etc. One caveat to this discussion is that the collective bargaining consortia can also engage in supply side. However, we do not regularly see supply-side consortia engaging in collective bargaining. The collective bargaining consortia will work in a limited capacity on the supply side. They may work to have some type of courier system; they may also work to lower costs, or provide some type of discounted centralized resource. At the core though these types of consortia are focused on lowering the cost for the member libraries. The second type of consortia is what has been created as a result of the influence of technology of the field of resource sharing. The supply-side consortia.

THE SUPPLY-SIDE CONSORTIA The supply-side consortia is a newer conceptualization of a resource-­sharing consortia. This type of consortia evolved out of the increased ability to get items to patrons quickly and with more efficiency. As interlibrary loan moved into a resource-sharing model the ability for patrons to access and request items increased dramatically. No longer was it necessary for a patron to go to the library and talk with a librarian about what they were looking for. Now all a patron would have to do is access the item in an electronic database or some other web-based discovery system This would lead to a dramatic increase in requests. The dramatic increase leads to a greater need to have request processed through a central software at the borrowing institution. If a software is developed to track requests, the next natural discussion is the development then of an automated request-sending mechanism.

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The automated systems would be able to easily and seamlessly send requests that are placed from a patron online to the library that can lend the item. This type of free flow of requests in the system places a new emphasis on speed. Since a patron can come to expect near instantaneous access to items in their own catalog the need to present items quickly becomes very important to the supply-side consortia. This leads to the supply-side consortia focusing primarily on quick access and efficient turnaround times. Also given the nature of quick access these types of consortia are usually structured around a vendor. While it is possible that a collective bargaining consortia could engage is some kinds of supply side issues, the supply-side consortia usually do not engage in collective bargaining. The distinction between the supply-side and the collective bargaining consortia is subtle but important. Take, for example, a large consortium like AMIGOS. AMIGOS is a collective bargaining consortia because its primary function is to gain access to resources cheaper than member libraries could negotiate on their own. However, they also have a courier service, but there is a lack of the emphasis on turnaround times and efficient processing. The turnaround time is the key point of distinction and why it is possible to see a supply-side consortia functioning within a larger collective bargaining consortia. The duality that has evolved between the interplay between the collective bargaining consortia and the supply-side consortia is the reason why we see so many libraries belonging to multiple consortia at the same time. The supply-side consortia are a newer idea, and one that has some very interesting implications for resource sharing. In the case studies ahead we will see how the evolution and creation of the supply-side consortia have altered the resource-sharing landscapes and have opened new opportunities for interconnectedness not previously available. The ability for a patron to seamlessly request a book from any library within a consortial group, or the ability to near-instantaneously gain access to an electronic journal article, are all opportunities that technology has provided to the emerging supply-side consortia.

3.1 CASE STUDY: RELAIS D2D—SUPPORTING CONSORTIAL RESOURCE SHARING Relais D2D is used by groups of libraries interested in offering easy access for their users to each other’s collections. These libraries may even include a commitment to guaranteed service levels as well as expedited delivery as part of their agreement. Key to the success of these agreements is that they

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operate more efficiently than traditional ILL services. It is vital that staff involvement is minimized, processes are automated as much as possible, and users can submit requests with the confidence that requested items will be received and in the timeframes promised. This results in a loyal user community that appreciate the service provided. To describe how Relais D2D is used to support these services, Borrow Direct is used as an example. Borrow Direct is a partnership of 12 Ivies Plus academic institutions representing approximately 70 million volumes in their federated union catalog.The initial three members, Columbia, Penn, and Yale, went live with the service in 1999. By 2002 membership grew to seven with the addition of Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, and Princeton. In 2010 Borrow Direct migrated to Relais D2D to support the service as the existing software was outdated. Once again the membership grew by adding Harvard and MIT in 2011, UChicago in 2014, Johns Hopkins in 2015, and Duke in 2016. Since its inception, Borrow Direct has successfully filled over 1.8 million requests. Currently Borrow Direct fills approximately 250,000 requests per year for users in the Ivies Plus. ϯϬϬϬϬϬ

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   While Borrow Direct started by sharing from their book collection, in recent years access to other collections, such as audio-visual items, has been added. Borrow Direct policies are key to the success and ease of access for users. For example, the agreement that users may request items that are

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held at their local library but currently not available, e.g., the item in on loan to another user, in these circumstances if the item is requestable from another member library the user may request it. This has proven to be a more efficient method of providing access to the user than recalling the item from the user to which the item is on loan.The Relais D2D configuration and logic supports this policy and makes it clear to the user that the item can be requested. Borrow Direct members agree to respond to requests within four working days (although in reality response is usually much faster than this) and use UPS to provide expedited delivery to all libraries in the partnership.

How does Borrow Direct work for the user? The user starts by doing a federated search across the 12 Borrow Direct Z39.50 targets. The results display in a de-duplicated list. De-duplication is done on title/author, date and format so that the user can select precisely the item needed.

   From this list the user clicks on the title of interest at which point the Relais D2D Requestability logic runs and determines precisely what option is available for the user. Requestability assesses the information in the bibliographic and item-level records returned from each library that holds the item and compares it with the configuration for

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each of these libraries. Requestability looks at a number of different elements, including: • Current status of the item, e.g., is it on loan; • The shelving location, e.g., is it in a location from which the library does not loan; • Call number, e.g., is it in a call number range from which the library does not loan; • Format, e.g., is it in a format which the library does not loan. Three different outcomes are possible. 1. The item is available in the user’s local library. In this case available means that according to Requestability the item is not already checked out to another user. In this case a link to the item in the local catalog displays. In the following screenshot the user logged in is from Penn.

   2.The item is requestable from Borrow Direct. In this case requestable means that according to the Requestability logic the item is held by and requestable from at least one library in the partnership based on what has been configured, i.e., the item is not checked out and is in a collection and format that the library or libraries are able to loan. The user is invited to specify their preferred pickup location and submit a request. Once the user submits the request to Relais D2D, a confirmation message is sent that can be filed away for future reference.

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   3. The item is not requestable from Borrow Direct. In this case at least one library in the partnership holds the item but it is not currently requestable, e.g., the item is already checked out or the item is in a collection from which the library is not able to loan. The user is given the option of submitting a traditional ILL request knowing that the item may take some time to arrive, i.e., not within the normal service times provided by Borrow Direct. This prevents the user from hitting a dead end.

  

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In addition, Relais D2D checks to confirm the user currently is in good standing in the local library system and has a patron type that is eligible to use Borrow Direct. If not, then an error message displays preventing the user from using the service or submitting requests. With the three outcomes described above the user knows exactly what to expect. For items requestable from Borrow Direct the user can submit a request knowing that it is virtually guaranteed that the item will be received within 4–5 days. The fill rate for Borrow Direct is consistently 95%. Traditional ILL cannot offer the same guarantees and service levels and so the user cannot submit requests with the same level of surety. The user is able to track their requests at any time using the My Account feature, if configured by the local library, it is also for the user to cancel requests.

  

Creating the routing list When the request is submitted to Borrow Direct (as described in point 2) it is added into Relais D2D complete with a load balanced routing list of the libraries and locations from which the item is currently requestable. Load balancing is applied to ensure requests are distributed equitably, this is done by checking the potential list of suppliers and determining which has received the fewest requests, this library is added to the top of the list; the one with second fewest is second in the list and so on. It is possible to weight member libraries so that they send fewer or more requests as desired.

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In addition to load balancing, tiers can be created and sequenced so that locations in tiers that sequenced lower are only used once other locations have been added to the list. In Borrow Direct tiers are used so that locations that are “slower” to respond and fill requests are used only if there are no other options available. This ensures that if there are multiple requestable locations the slower ones will not appear at the top of the routing list. Member libraries can also sequence their own locations so that if there are multiple locations in a library for an item, the order in which to use these locations can be specified, e.g., a remote storage location used last.

Distributing bookbands Once the routing list is built, requests are directed to the first library and location. Each library indicates their preference for printing or emailing bookbands at each location which receives bookbands. The bookband includes all the information needed by staff at both the supplying library and requesting library to retrieve and process the request. The same bookband stays with the request throughout its complete life cycle. Bookbands include a bar code representation of the request number ensuring efficiency and accuracy when updating requests at both the supplying and requesting libraries.

How does Borrow Direct work for staff at the supplying library? Once the bookbands are emailed and printed, staff at the supplying library retrieve the requested items from the shelf. Since the requestability logic indicated the item was currently requestable the retrieval success rate is very high. Staff do not waste time going to the shelf to retrieve something that is not considered loanable by the library. Once the items are retrieved staff use Relais D2D to update the request to indicate the items is shipped to the user’s library. Once the barcode is entered to retrieve the request staff at the supplying library can wand the barcode from the book and update the request. As part of the update to the request an updated is sent automatically to the supplying library’s library system to check out the item. This is done using an NCIP CheckoutItem message. No additional work is required by staff to keep the circulation system up to date.

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   Or if there are multi-volumes being supplied for a single request, staff can enter multiple barcodes so each volume can be tracked separately.

   Once the items are updated staff and packaging done, staff at the Borrow Direct libraries use UPS to ship to the partner libraries.

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If for some reason the requested item cannot be supplied, staff can indicate a Reason Unfilled; in this case, Relais D2D moves the request to the next supplier. If there are no more suppliers in the routing list, then an email is sent to the user with an invitation to submit the request via ILL.

  

How does Borrow Direct work for staff at the requesting library? When the items are filled and arrive at the requesting library this is the first involvement of staff at the library that has initiated the request. No staff effort is required in initiating the request and determining where to send it to be filled—the process is completely unmediated and automated. Staff use Relais D2D to update the request to indicate the items is received. Once the barcode is entered to retrieve the request, staff at the requesting library can wand a unique barcode, e.g., from the book or the request to update the request. As part of the update to the request an NCIP AcceptItem message is sent automatically to the requesting library’s library system to create a brief bibliographic and item record and place the item on hold for the user. No additional work is required by staff to keep the circulation system up to date.

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   Or if there are multivolumes being received for a single request, staff can enter multiple barcodes so each volume can be tracked separately. The user is notified by their local library system that the item is available for pickup at which point they can visit library to check it out.

Returning loaned items At both the requesting and supplying library the workflows and updates are equally as efficient. At the requesting library, once the user returns the item staff updates the request as returned. While this update may have already been checked in at the local circulation desk, Relais D2D sends an NCIP CheckinItem m ­ essage to the local circulation system. At the supplying library, once the item is returned, staff updates the request as complete. As part of the update to the request an updated is sent automatically to the supplying library’s library system to check in the item. This is done using an NCIP CheckinItem message. No a­ dditional work is required by staff to keep the circulation system up to date.

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For example, updating a request as returned:

   For example, updating a multivolume request as complete:

   The simplicity of the Borrow Direct workflow for staff and the automatic updating of the circulation status in the local library system ensures requests can be dealt with quickly. Borrow Direct libraries are able to use student staff to process requests.

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Alternate models Discovery web services As an alternative to using the Discovery provided through Relais D2D a series of web services have been and are being developed. FindItem. This web service can be embedded in a local catalog so that if a local copy is not available, e.g., it is on loan, then FindItem is called and using search terms such as an ISBN, title phrase, author and date, determine if the item is requestable from other member libraries. If there is an available copy, a request may be submitted. FindItems (forthcoming). This web service will extend searching capabilities to allow keyword searching. This will allow searching of consortia resources to be embedded in each library’s preferred Discovery platform. In this scenario the user will be able to do their search and submit requests to Relais D2D without leaving the local library catalog. ILLiad interoperability An alternative model was implemented for other groups whereby after the user searches for and finds an item of interest the request is submitted to the user’s local ILLiad system. The request includes a load balanced OCLC lender string provided by Relais D2D Requestability. In this model, use of an ILLiad add-on moves the request to OCLC with no intervention at the local library. “Get-it” and other starting points Some consortia and libraries that perhaps do not share the history of a partnership such as Borrow Direct approach resource sharing amongst group members from different perspectives. For example, a “Get-it” button or logic may be implemented locally that makes decisions as to the best possibility for sourcing an item without the user needing to be aware of the differences between specialized services and ILL. “Get-it” can use the FindItem web service to check the resources of the group and submit a request if appropriate. Irrespective of what discovery options are made available to users, it is inevitable that “blank request forms” will continue to be used. Once again the FindItem web service can automate the process of checking these incoming requests against the group’s resources thereby streaming a significant percentage of requests off to other member libraries to be filled with no intervention at the user’s local library.

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Future Many groups have formal agreements that outline the policies surrounding their resources sharing activities. However, there is growing interest in exploring ways to move requests from group to group.This may be done via less formal agreements, e.g., indicating no charges. Relais D2D will support these arrangements in the future. For example, if it is not possible to fill a request within Borrow Direct, Relais D2D will use FindItem to check another group (or groups), such as the Big Ten Academic Alliance (UBorrow service) and send the request. Relais D2D can also be extended to support on site borrowing for users from member libraries, facilitating their ability to go onsite to borrow materials. Resource sharing can take many forms, and systems such as Relais D2D provide the features and interoperability to guarantee that services can be offered efficiently for both users and staff. Source: Clare MacKeigan, Relais International

3.2 CASE STUDY: NETWORK INTER-LIBRARY DOCUMENT EXCHANGE (NILDE) 1. Please tell us about the history of NILDE When did it start? In Italy, at the end of the 1990s, two main national services for the sharing of resources were well established: ACNP, the Italian National Union Catalogue of Periodicals, which at that time included about 1500 academic and research libraries which regularly updated their serials holdings, and SBN, the National Library System, in which about 3,000, mainly public and academic libraries participated, updating their serial and book holdings. Besides the two national services, a repository of the Italian OPACs was managed by the AIB (Association of Italian Libraries), to provide metasearch facilities to about 250 OPACs connected through a meta-search engine. As ACNP was a specialized serial catalog, it was considered to be (and still it is) the most authoritative Italian resource for interlibrary document delivery service. In Italy, the term document delivery (DD) has been used to refer to ILL of not returnable materials. Thanks to these national services, the number of DD requests showed a general increasing trend which led to the need for the reorganization of services in libraries, through a rethinking at a broader national level. A

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proposal for a national “DD and ILL Customer charter” was issued, aiming to establish general criteria for efficient DD management, such as visibility of holdings, transparency of terms and conditions, promptness of response, completeness of data to start a DD/ILL request, homogeneous rules and means of payment for services. The great differences present among so many types of libraries were considered to be the main obstacle; in fact, the only successful cooperative projects involved a restricted number of Italian libraries generally belonging to the same disciplinary field or the same geographical region. The NILDE (Network Inter-Library Document Exchange) web application was initially developed at the Italian National Research Council (CNR) Bologna Research Library, in the framework of a 2-years project funded by CNR, which aimed at “to exploit the new Internet technologies in order to develop advanced inter-library services and to promote cooperation among CNR and Italian university libraries.” NILDE software design was inspired by ARL’s pioneering study conducted by Mary Jackson (1998), the results of which identified characteristics of successful high performance document delivery services. The initial vision for NILDE in the year 2000 was: • To create software to computerize the entire DD workflow, reducing library operator working time and avoiding highly-repetitive tasks; • To integrate in the automation software a secure way for electronic transmission of documents, so reducing management costs and increasing the efficiency of service; • To automatically provide performance indicators, such as cost, fulfillment rate and turnaround time; • To promote a cooperative model based on quality of service, which would have start a virtuous interactive cycle in Italy, stimulating libraries to improve their service. As a consequence, not only would the requesting libraries have benefitted, but so, eventually, would the overall system of libraries and their end-users; • To propose a unified DD payment system. The first prototype of the NILDE software was presented to the librarian community in 2001 at the First Italian Workshop on “Internet Document Delivery and interlibrary cooperation,” where all the attending libraries were invited to join the pilot project. A mailing list was set up devoted to the exchange of ideas, problems, and solutions and to keep participants informed about ongoing improvements and developments in the software.

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Since then, the rapid growth in membership proved how great the need was in Italy for the adoption of standardized and structured processes for ILL services by means of the sharing of common best practices through a computerized system. Libraries have stimulated NILDE continuous growth and the development of innovative features. What were some of the ideas that served as guiding principles? The establishment in 2004 of the NILDE Rules and Regulations has truly sped up the growth of NILDE. The Rules are the common framework libraries agree to comply to. Libraries commit to: A. Supply documents on a reciprocal basis. B. Facilitate access to their holdings, through their participation in at least one of the national union catalogs or meta-OPAC. C. Supply documents within 2 days (average) and 5 days (maximum). D. Supply documents at no charge and, in case of heavy usage, ask for a one-off payment at the end of the year. E. Distribute their borrowing requests equally among all libraries (and send a maximum of five requests per week to a single library). Reciprocity of the DD service (point A) is the most important point of the Rules and Regulations and is the building block of the ILL cooperation: indeed, it identifies the commitment of each individual towards the whole network.The scope of such a commitment was initially a very controversial issue: in fact, NILDE could have been used by separate groups of libraries as simply a software tool or could have become a common base for broad and national cooperation. The choice to create one broad cooperative network has proven to be the right one. Point B of the Rules states that libraries must make their holdings visible to the whole community by actively joining at least one national catalogue (in a previous version of the Rules, this point was framed as a recommendation, not as a duty). In case they do not participate in any union or national catalog, libraries are given a 1-year grace period to be able to comply to this rule. By actively joining the national catalogs, libraries commit themselves to supplying a quality service, rather than just using it. Point C of the Rules commits libraries to guarantee promptness of response. Libraries agree to supply documents at no charge and, in case of heavy usage, ask for a one-off payment at the end of the year (point D). The goal of this policy was to simplify all the administrative ­procedures due to payment transactions thus avoiding unnecessary overburdening of staff. Point E invites participants to distribute the requests among all the possible suppliers equally.

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These are the rules the community has imposed on itself and, we can say today, have been one of the key factors in its success. The Rules and Regulation are periodically revised, to make sure they are adequate to meet the needs of the whole community. For instance, at present there is an international working group working on a possible extension of the Rules to cope with international libraries membership.

2. What regions does NILDE operate in? Is it only in Italy or does you have members in other countries? NILDE member libraries are mainly based in Italy, but there are members in other European countries, such as Spain, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Sweden, Croatia, and Greece. The NILDE server is located in Italy and its software is run and managed by the CNR Bologna Research Library. Leonidas Pispiringas et al. (2015) describes a collaboration between CNR and HEAL-link, the Consortium of Hellenic Academic Libraries, to setup another server Greece by HEAL-link to provide a new Electronic Document Delivery Service to Greek public organizations, based on the NILDE software.

3. How many members of NILDE are there? Are they only academic libraries or are there other types of libraries involved? NILDE counts today almost 1000 libraries. They are mainly academic libraries (76%), as well as libraries in health research institutions and ­hospitals (9%), public research institutions (8%), public libraries and other public administrations (5%), and libraries in not-for-profit organizations (2%). The directory of NILDE libraries is publicly available on the NILDE website.

4. How does a library become a member of NILDE? It is very easy to become a member: NILDE is open to any publicly funded or not-for-profit institution wishing to join it. Libraries have to register in the NILDE website to create a new library account. During registration, they will be asked for their complete address and contact data, OPAC, their union catalog codes or other unique identifiers, the name and contacts of ILL librarians, the ILL service policies they are going to apply, within the scope of the NILDE Rules and Regulation, to which they commit.

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5. Is there a fee for the NILDE service? Is the fee annual or a per transaction fee? Registration is free for the first year, after which a fee-based annual ­subscription is necessary.There are three types of subscription: • single library; • institution: used by a public institution to register all its libraries; • project or consortium: used by a consortium or a project to register all their libraries; • new libraries and also libraries using NILDE “occasionally” (i.e., up to 25 borrowing requests in a year), do not pay any fee. Annual fee income is used by CNR Bologna Research Library to support NILDE system maintenance and staff costs, on the base of an economically sustainable model: the service costs are shared among all participant libraries.

6. How do you handle copyright in NILDE? Copyright law in the European countries has been reformed after 2001 according to the EU Directive 2001/29/EC on the armonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society (usually referred to as the SocInfo Directive). The ILL activity carried out by libraries would be allowed by the SocInfo Directive’s article 5 on limitations and exceptions (article 5 (2) c) on “specific acts of reproduction made by publicly accessible libraries, …” According to authoritative scholar Simonetta Vezzoso (2005, 2006) ILL, even with “point-to-point” electronic transmission of the “graphic document” does not appear in contrast with the SocInfo Directive. However, electronic document delivery involves an array of complex copyright issues, many of which were raised in a Court case involving Subito, the German library document delivery service provided by the main German libraries, as well as Austrian and Swiss libraries. Publishers, fearing the economic damage caused by ILL due to cancellations of current journals subscriptions, questioned the compliance of electronic document delivery services with German copyright law and the SocInfo Directive. As a result, the German law introduced a new copyright provision on electronic document delivery, which was explicitly considered and allowed “under certain conditions.” Moreover, since limitations and exceptions of the SocInfo Directive are not mandatory to EU member states, they have been adopted in a variety

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of ways in the national legislations. It is clear that the SocInfo Directive failed in its initial objective of copyright armonisation and that fragmented implementation of exceptions has resulted in increasing barriers to crossborder access to content in Europe, instead of avoiding them. Document delivery carried out by libraries is an example of such a fragmentation. Some member states clearly discipline it within the framework of library services: United Kingdom Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (1998), German Copyright law amendment (2008), and Danish Copyright act sect. 50 and “Copy-Dan” Collective Licenses do so. Some other member states, like Spanish Ley 23/2006, de 7, de julio, por la que se modifica el texto refundido de la Ley de Propiedad Intelectual, aprobado por el Real Decreto Legislativo 1/1996, de 12 de abril and Italian Legge sul Diritto d’autore L. 633/1941 – art. 68, 68 bis, 69, do not explicitly mention it and leave it within generic exceptions related to certain reproduction acts allowed to libraries and archives. The Italian law described above allows such reproductions through solely “photocopy, Xerox or analogous system,” thus referring to a specific medium. On the contrary, the recently changed UK law spells out a modern and more flexible framework for copyright exceptions for libraries, archives and museums within the boundaries of non-commercial research and private study, since it allows librarians to assist researchers and students by providing copies of “limited parts” of a ­copyright work, “regardless of the medium” in which it is recorded. In the NILDE Rules and Regulation compliance with copyright law is clearly stated. Libraries pledge themselves: • To request documents on behalf of their qualified users who will undertake it for exclusive personal use for educational and research purposes; • To send photocopies of the requested documents or to make temporary digital copy (tiff, pdf) of the same for the one and only purpose of accelerating the transmission process; whereas the utilization of the digital copy, unless the existing contractual clauses do not permit otherwise, remains in every case limited to the sole possibility of making it a single hardcopy; • Unless the existing contractual clauses do not permit otherwise, to deliver to the user a single paper copy of the document, destroying any digital copy received. Summing up, in NILDE the received digital copy is temporary, it has always to be printed and such printed copy is the only one to be delivered to the end-user. “Unfortunately” … several user satisfaction survey

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conducted within NILDE to assess the ILL services show how important the electronic version of documents is for end users, which, on the other hand, are completely unaware of the copyright and licensing restrictions imposed to their libraries. Another important aspect to be considered is the restrictions imposed by licenses of E-Resources, which are now the most represented in academic and research libraries collections. Exceptions and limitations for libraries provided by copyright laws have become “license to use” under contract law. In fact, in all but four EU member states (Belgium, Ireland, Portugal, and United Kingdom) contract terms can override existing copyright exceptions. A NILDE working group was set up in 2005 to examine the licenses on electronic journals in Italy. The purpose of the group was to foster communication between librarians and consortia negotiating with publishers, to stimulate them to be more aware about ILL clauses in licenses. As a consequence, the NILDE system has been recognized by many publishers as a “secure electronic system” or an “Ariel or fax-like equivalent system” to supply (single) copies from their licensed material. Publisher’s requirements have driven the implementation of NILDE SEDD module. In these cases, a proactive and careful negotiation, carried out through years, has led to suitable licensing conditions. Licensing restrictions give rise to many issues on ILL practices. One main issue is the difficulty of identifying the “proper” license applying to each e-journal to be supplied by the library, and to know if they have a license that enables them to share an item with another library. It has been found in several studies that “the license checking that is required inhibits fulfillment more than the licenses restrictions do themselves” (Wiley, 2004, pp. 94–102). Since licenses are often written in technical, legal, and sometimes vague language, license text interpretation is another common issue. In this rather complex context, full of “lights and shadows,” NILDE launched the ALPE project, aimed to develop a framework for ILL librarians to comply with licenses, to automate the license checking and comprehension process during the ILL activity and to allow exchange of ILL rights data across systems (et al., 2015). ALPE (Archivio Licenze Periodici Elettronici—E-Journals Licenses Archive) is a national archive of ILL clauses, extracted from standard and negotiated licenses, to manage, to publicly share, and to check the permitted uses of e-resources for Interlibrary Loan and Document Delivery.The ALPE

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archive is freely available using a web-based interface. It allows browsing and searching for ILL clauses contained in e-licenses by resource identifiers (ISSN and ISBN), by publisher or content provider, or by platform. It then allows refining a search by subscriber institution, by E-Resources type, by license validity year, and by subscription type (i.e., current or back-files subscription). The NILDE software has been integrated with ALPE to automate the license checking activity during the lending workflow: NILDE uses APIs to query the ALPE database, retrieves and shows information about licenses, and then applies the restrictions, if any, before to supply (or not supply) the requested item.

7. Are there any unique technologies being used in NILDE? NILDE software is based on the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) architecture so it can be used by any user with an Internet connection and web browser. The user interface is based on XHTML, CSS, and AJAX. Thanks to UTF-8 data encoding, NILDE supports multiple languages. The user interface can be easily translated in any language; it is currently provided in Italian, English, Spanish, French, and Greek. Many technologies are used, to provide: • Support for Institutional Authentication through the Shibboleth/SAML framework. NILDE is partner of IDEM-GARR Federation (the Italian Authentication and Authorization Identity Management of the Academic and Research Network Infrastructure). • Links with the most important online bibliographical databases (PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, Scifinder, etc.) and publisher’s websites, through the OpenURL protocol. • Links to catalogs for a dynamic search of the holdings of libraries through the Z39.50 protocol and MARC21 XML. At present, it has been integrated into NILDE search in the two national catalogs, ACNP and SBN, and in many Italian universities Aleph/Alma catalogs. • SEDD (Secure Electronic Document Delivery) for electronic transmission of documents, plus a “Digital Hard Copy” built-in module for the automatic conversion of textual PDF documents into images; •  Fully integration with the ALPE (E-journals Licenses Archive) database; • NILDE API (Application Programming Interface) are under development, to make NILDE software fully “open” to communicate to any other ILL system. API architecture is based on HTTP REST, outputs

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JSON-API and uses OATH-2 for authentication. API documentation is publicly available on the NILDE website. The NILDE SEDD built-in Module, including the Digital Hard Copy, is a unique technology which has been implemented by NILDE. NILDE performs SEDD by the means of a file-uploading web server which accepts the following file-formats only: PDF, JPG, JPEG, GIF, TIFF, TIF, BMP, and PNG. The operator selects the digital document from a web form to send it to the receiving library. NILDE saves the file in a webserver disk space, processes it through the Digital Hard Copy procedure (which is only performed on PDF files), then makes available the digital document to the requesting library by the means of the NILDE userinterface. The requesting library needs to authenticate into the NILDE system to view the received document and to print it; the file will be immediately destroyed from the NILDE server, after printing it, or it will be removed after 7 days. The NILDE Digital Hard Copy is part of the SEDD Module. It processes PDF files only. In fact, many publishers which allow for SEDD of their electronic material, do not allow to perform it on original PDF files, but only on the printed copy of them. This is to guarantee that a copy used for ILL is a real “image-copy” that has lost all the peculiar PDF’s capabilities on electronic text, such as text search and retrieval, text selection-copy-and-paste, etc. (we call the publisher’s original file “the text PDF”). In this case, the manual operations a librarian has to perform are: to print the PDF; to digitize the printed copy by the means of a scanner, so obtaining a new PDF-image file; to use for SEDD the PDF-image file (we call it “the hard-copied PDF”). The NILDE digital Hard Copy module emulates those manual operations, implementing a three-steps process: 1. The first step extracts each single page from the text-PDF (INPUT file) and transforms it in a PNG image file. In such a way all the page contents (text, images, etc.) are combined to obtain a single rasterized image, having a fixed resolution of 200 dpi (this is an acceptable compromise between printing/reading quality and the image file size). This also should guarantee that the final document which is sent to the requesting library is not a “perfect” digital copy of the original PDF file, since it has a lower quality. 2. The second step combines all the obtained PNG image files into a new PDF file (OUTPUT file).

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3. F  inally, a “copyright” front page is added to the OUTPUT file, containing the bibliographic data, the ILL transaction information (such as the borrowing and lending libraries, the request and supply dates), and a copyright notice. Publisher’s licensing information (the ILL license clause), if applied by the lending library, will be visible soon in the future. Such a “digital” Hard Copy process, implemented by NILDE, is equivalent to the three-steps manual operations previously mentioned. Digital Hard Copy limits to: max input file size (15 MB) and max output file size (30 MB).

8. Tell us briefly some of the statistics How many requests does the system process each year? NILDE processes about 220,000 ILL requests/year. Since its beginning, it has processed 2 million ILL transactions. Do you track the time it takes to request and supply an item? If so what is the average time it takes from request to delivery of an article? Yes, each library may constantly monitor their average turn-around time. This is calculated by NILDE as difference between the fulfillment (or nonfulfillment) date and the request date for each item, both on the borrowing and on the lending side. To comply with the Rules and Regulation, libraries should keep their lending turn-around time indicator less than, or equal to, 2 (i.e., they answer requests in 2 days on average). We can see they behave much better than this. Thanks to the virtuous processes, the whole community has improved these indicators: the retrieval of a document within the network has become easier (fulfillment rate is 87%) and the global average time from request to delivery of an article has steadily decreased to 0.6 days.

9. Can you give us a description of the process, how are requests processed in NILDE? NILDE supports the entire workflow of ILL requests, starting from a patron request to their library, and ending with patron notification of delivery by the library. In between there is the ILL process between the requesting library and one or more lending libraries. Not all libraries use the full available NILDE functionalities: in fact, they may use NILDE only to manage the ILL process between libraries, without managing end-user’s requests, or managing them elsewhere. At present, there are about 50 thousands NILDE

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end-users which are registered at their libraries (83% are academic users, 11% are at health research institutions, 3% are at other public research institutions). A sample workflow could be the following: a patron discovers a bibliographic reference in any of the library resources, let’s say they find it in a bibliographic database, or in library discovery tool. These must have been configured to make the request to the ILL service smooth. Usually a “Request by NILDE” button or a library link resolver button will be available and it will send request to NILDE via OpenURL. NILDE will ask the patron for authentication. The patron may select “federated authentication,” using single-sign on. It means they will be redirected to their Institutional Identity provider for authentication (of course, NILDE supports traditional on-site authentication too, it means patron has their own NILDE credentials). After logged in NILDE, patron sends the ILL request with just one click: in fact, the request is already filled with complete bibliographic data. ILL librarians will manage all user requests through their NILDE ­borrowing panel. For each request NILDE will automatically query all the connected catalogs through Z39.50, looking for suppliers. Libraries holding the specific item will be displayed for each union or virtual catalog. The order supplier libraries are displayed is based on a “ranking” algorithm. There is no automatic sending of the ILL request at this stage (unlike in other ILL systems): librarian will select a supplier library, with just one click. The ranking algorithm calculates on the fly the imbalance between borrowing and lending requests issued/received by each library in the current year. Libraries with the highest imbalance are shown on top of the list. Rank suggests the most suitable library to receive a borrowing request, to help that library equilibrate any imbalance (and to better distribute requests in the overall system). However, the requesting library is free to choose the preferred supplier. The selected library receives the request; ILL librarians will manage it through their NILDE lending panel. If a link resolver has been configured, librarians may verify if the item is in their holdings with just one click, and directly access to it in case of an electronic item. The “Find licenses” button will help to find the proper license for that e-item; if a license is found and selected (among a list of licenses), NILDE will apply the license restrictions (or no restrictions if there aren’t) and let librarians fulfill the request according to them, either selecting the NILDE SEDD module to upload the file, or selecting another traditional transmission method (mail or fax or other

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E-Systems, like Ariel etc.). In case of SEDD, NILDE starts processing the uploaded file behind the scenes, performing the Digital Hard Copy. This processing will usually take a few minutes. Request fulfillment, or nonfulfillment, will be notified to the requesting library in their NILDE borrowing panel, and also via e-mail. If SEDD transmission has been used, librarian may open the file and print it directly from the NILDE interface; then notifies patron that article has been received and available at the library or in the internal mailing system. This ends the process.

HELPFUL WEBSITES https://nilde.bo.cnr.it/learn.php?inc=rules https://nilde.bo.cnr.it https://nilde.bo.cnr.it/learn.php?inc=rules https://nilde.bo.cnr.it https://nilde.heal-link.gr/ https://nilde.bo.cnr.it/register.php https://nilde.bo.cnr.it/doc/api/ https://nilde.bo.cnr.it/licenze.php Source: Dr. Silvana Mangiaracina, Head of Library, Bologna Research Library, National Research Council

3.3 CASE STUDY: RAPIDILL (RAPID) RapidILL (Rapid) is a low-cost, low maintenance, high-quality interlibrary loan service. The most difficult part of Rapid is explaining how easy it is to use, since the system performs so many functions efficiently, and without the need for staff intervention. Rapid was developed in the wake of a flash flood in Fort Collins, CO, in 1997. In the flood event, Colorado State University’s (CSU) library lost every single bound volume in the heavily used main library collection. In the late 1990s, borrowing was beginning to be more highly automated. However, lending was an extremely labor-intensive process. To maintain our ARL research level, provide for our grant funding, and provide a quality education for 20,000+ students, we had to find partners who could lend to us quickly. Fortunately, we had programming experience from a computer programmer who had been a work study student in ILL.

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We partnered with four academic libraries that had collections that were highly correlated to CSU’s. We asked them to submit an extract of their holdings, and we processed these holdings so that we could generate an ILL request on standard number and year/volume alone.This process eliminated two of the biggest time sinks in the lending sphere: looking up holdings to see if the exact year of volume was held, and copying the call number and location onto a pick slip. All that was required for the lending staff was to sort the requests, pick them up from the shelves, and scan the article. We added additional features, such as being able to deflect from nonaccessible parts of the collection, and we built in a real-time, rolling load-levelling algorithm.This provided an equitable distribution of requests to all libraries, and facilitated a less than 24-hour turnaround time. Our patrons were delighted with the service, especially since the ILL unit (in the early Internet days) set up receiving Ariel stations around campus, and our students delivered the items to campus mailboxes, or mailed them directly to the students. Eventually, we began to see “Letters to the Editor” in the campus newspaper asking the library to not replace the lost collection, but to stick with the new way. As the initial project wound down, the libraries that had volunteered to partner with us asked us to make Rapid into a two-way borrowing and requesting Interlibrary Loan System. By early 2003, we were live and transmitting requests between each of the participating libraries. As word spread about Rapid, we started receiving requests for other libraries to join the system, and we started to receive requests from state consortia to join Rapid. We now have several state consortia in Rapid, such as The Boston Library Consortium, Maryland, California, and Michigan pods, among others. Our Rapid requirements, which are still in place, are simple and easy to follow.We ask for an annual update of print holdings.This is a simple extract from the OPAC of all journal holdings; a library can send us either a complete MARC export, or an export of specific fields that we need in order for requests to traverse the system.We can take holdings in MARC, KBART, Excel, text-delimited, etc. Our goal is to make the process one that is most comfortable for the library. Like everything we do, libraries worry a great deal about the first holdings load and their unique catalog environment, but we have almost 20 years of experience in working catalog output. We are comfortable working with any data set. In addition, many libraries have automated the holdings process, and we support FTP so that the holdings process can be hands-off.

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The cost for membership to join Rapid is relatively nominal since we operate on a cost recovery basis as part of the State University, we maintain an extremely low overhead. All of the expenditures in Rapid go to supporting and developing the system. To maximize functionality for our Rapid library base, we have designed it to be interoperable with ILLiad, Clio, WorldCat Resource Sharing, and RelaisILL. Over the years, we have made many improvements in the system as the technical environment has changed. We added one of Rapid’s most invisible, but time-saving features: Local Holdings Awareness. When a request is placed by the user, and the ILL borrowing staff submits the request, Rapid first checks the request to ensure that the item is not available locally—and in the process saving significant amounts of staff time by eliminating the need to check the local OPAC for every borrowing request. In addition to deflecting requests from lending sub-locations that could not meet the 24-hour turnaround time, we added the ability for libraries to add their electronic holdings for lending. We are able to block lending requests for any databases which does not provide an ILL lending provision, so that one may feel confident that a request through Rapid is for lendable material. We are able to provide a campus-specific URL to get to the title level of a journal to minimize the need to hunt through various databases to find an article. Each URL is tailored to each campus’ proxy server, and no one from a remote campus can ever use the URL to access any database. As a request moves through the system, the call number/URL is updated to reflect the local information. The only difference sending Rapid your print and electronic holdings is that the print environment is so volatile that e-holdings should be updated more frequently. Fortunately, e-holdings are usually listed in aggregators outside of the OPAC, so updated e-holdings is simply a process of uploading the aggregated file from Ebsco, SFX, etc. Larger libraries with many databases update e-holdings by uploading the aggregate file monthly, others, quarterly or semiannually. We are also able to change the lendability status of any database or other data point as licenses change. The next generation of enhancements included the ability to “cross match” on ISSN numbers. If a library sends a request with a print ISSN, our system correlates with the electronic ISSN, and thus provides a greater pool of suppliers to help maintain the load leveling algorithm that we’ve built.

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We added a statistics package, so that libraries can track their Rapid usage to evaluate the volume of Rapid requests. (even though the data is often available in the ILL management system). It is also important to note that with these changes, our turnaround time has decreased to an average of less than 12 hours, since Rapid requests are so information rich and easy to process. Another enhancement arose from seeing patterns in the turnaround time. For example, libraries that were on the west coast, and still sending requests when east coast and central time libraries were closed, had a longer turnaround time since the requests sat overnight awaiting processing. We have added a factor of geographic awareness to our distribution, so that libraries’ request distribution is slightly biased to libraries in the same time zone. This helps balance turnaround time among all libraries. By gradually and slightly adjusting the bias to libraries based on time zone we have been able to get our turnaround time to under an average of 12 clock hours, while maintaining an overall monthly fill rate of between 94% and 97%. Our next step was to develop a system that allowed Rapid requests to be delivered to libraries regardless of which delivery software they use. It is possible for a library to scan an article using their software, and deliver that article in a system compliant with the borrower’s system. RapidX, as its come to be known, is used thousands of times daily. After long, and serious discussions about how to grow the system while still staying within our bounds of meeting our low-cost mandate, we felt that we could add book chapter requesting to the system. Adding book chapters meant that libraries would upload their monograph holdings to us. The most efficient way to do this is by doing a full MARC extract. We review all files, since the MARC standard has been applied with slight variations across institutions. Once we understand the data, we load the file, and we activate the book chapter processing function. This process is as seamless as journal article requesting, and the incoming request information is information-rich. In 2012, we finally decided to begin the development of one of the most requested optional modules for Rapid: monograph lending and borrowing: RapidR (for Rapid Returnables). The holdings update is identical to the holdings information for the book chapter module, so there is no extra work for the technical support staff. We were able to create a modified workflow by adding a Z39.50 query to our requesting process.

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A monograph request goes to a library that, according to the OPAC, is on the shelf. We expanded this virtual shelf check for RapidR libraries to their book chapter requests as well as to monograph lending requests. Z39.50 highly effective, though not perfect. It does, however, save a valuable amount of time for potential suppliers. We also have geolocation awareness, in addition to time zone awareness for monographs. The less distance a book has to travel, the sooner it will be in the user’s hands. We have also added other weighting factors, including the utilization of courier routes for libraries that use RapidR and are on the same courier route. Secondly, we have the same “look once and say yes or no” workflow. If the book is not on the shelf at one library, it may very well be on the shelf at someone else’s library. It doesn’t make sense to “wait 24 hours and look again,” or to look on the book trucks: just send it on to the next library. To simplify matters, we specify that each RapidR request should be processed and ready for shipment in 24 hours. Further, it only makes sense for a Rapid book to be shipped by a provider that can deliver within four working days. Many ILL staff members are concerned that this means shipping with a 2-day delivery provider. However, we’ve found that First Class Mail or standard UPS will get items delivered from any one Rapid library to another in four or less days. Our latest development initiative is to take advantage of the Open Access data environment. We harvest bibliographic information from databases which contain articles that we verify are freely available in an open access environment. When a library requests one of these articles, we retrieve the request from the Open Access/Freely Available database, and fill the request immediately. Open Access/Freely Available requests are usually received at the borrowing library in less than 5 minutes. We currently have almost 20 million articles available through our East Access database, and the Rapid access to these items has been growing at a fast pace. In short, we have always strived to be a responsive, effective, first class organization. Since we are a library, we understand the needs of our libraries first when we make changes or enhancements. We think of the needs of our users, in the same way that each Rapid library thinks about the needs of their users. A library is not here to serve Rapid, Rapid is here to be a means for research and academic libraries to maximize their service. In addition, we are part of an academic Interlibrary Loan department. We do not create a system and tell libraries that they will like it;

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rather, we see our needs and develop and test, and modify based on our user’s input. In a nutshell here are some of the things that Rapid provides: • Checks your local holdings (with the opportunity to override a local holding if the item is not available); • Precise, targeted requests that are distributed to lenders who actually own the specific item; • The opportunity to make any part of your print or e-collection “off limits” to lending, based on physical location, call number range, ISxN, database, e-publisher, etc.; • Information rich requests that create pick slips which minimize the workload for lenders; • A “look once only” lending workflow; • A borrowing fill rate between 94% and 97% per month; • A turnaround time average of less than 12 hours (not office hours), with many requests being delivered the same day; • An understanding that your Rapid requests help your supplying libraries meet their commitment while investing less staff time in the process; • A group of libraries committed to the same service levels and commitments that Rapid provides; • A system that works for a range of the largest libraries in the world, to some very small academic and research libraries; • Real-time load leveling; • Immediate Open Access article access. And, perhaps, most importantly, a system built by ILL librarians, staff, and technicians who understand your service needs, and your commitment to patron service.

CONCLUSION This chapter served to illustrate again the increasing pressure technology has placed on the resource-sharing units within libraries. From the evolution of interlibrary loan as a byproduct of the need for increased catalog connectedness, to its emergence in the resource sharing era as a driving force for gaining access to items that cannot be purchases, it is clear that resource sharing has altered the consistorial networks. No longer is the primary focus of the consortia shared cataloging, now the primary focus is integrated systems and seamless requesting system. As has been mentioned numerous times in this book, as patron expectations continue to

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evolve and the ability for a patron to gain access to information regardless of location and type, the resource sharing professional must look to new type of consortial arrangements to accomplish their goals of getting the patron the resources they want when they want them. This has led to the emergence of two type of consortia. The collective bargaining consortia and the supply-side consortia. Each of these types fills a need to the patron’s expectations One gains access to new resources that is cost-­ effective for libraries the other gain access to resources that may not be affordable, but does so in a quick and efficient manner. The question from here is, what happens when the types of resources the patron’s desire begins to shift as well? What pressures does that bring to the resource sharing unit to adapt to the new needs and wants?

REFERENCES Alberico, R., 2002. Academic library consortia in transition. New Directions for Higher Education 2002, 63–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/he.90. Allen, B.M., Hirshon, A., 1998. Hanging together to avoid hanging separately: opportunities for academic libraries and consortia. Information Technology and Libraries 17 (1), 36–44. Retrieved from: http://search.proquest.com/docview/215830312?accountid=7098. Horton, v., 2015. Library consortia overview. In: Horton, G.J., Pronevitz, G. (Eds.), Library Consortia, Models for Collaboration and Sustainability. ALA Editions,Chicago. Jackson, M., 1998. Measuring the performance of interlibrary loan operations in North American research and college libraries. Association of Research Libraries,Washington, DC. Mangiaracina, S., Russo, O.,Tugnoli, A., 2015.To each his own: how to provide a library user with an article respecting licence agreements. Interlending & Document Supply 43 (4), 199–206. Nfila, R.B., Darko-Ampem, K., 2002. Developments in academic library consortia from the 1960s through to 2000: a review of the literature. Library Management 23 (4/5), 203–212. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/01435120210429934. Pispiringas, L., Dervou, C., Boutlas, A., 2015. Heal-link: using NILDE to provide Public Organizations in Greece with articles from HEAL-link’s electronic subscriptions. In: Ecosistemi per la ricerca Atti Convegno ACNP/NILDE. Trieste, 22–23 maggio 2014. EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, Trieste, pp. 27–38. http://hdl.handle.net/10077/ 10907. Potter, G., 1997, Winter. Recent trends in statewide academic library consortia. Library Trends 45 (3), 373–390. Retrieved from: https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/ handle/2142/8099/librarytrendsv45i3f_opt.pdf ?sequence=1&isAllowed=y. Shreeves, E., 1997, Winter. Is there a future for cooperative collection development in the digital age. Library Trends 45 (3), 373–390. Retrieved from: https://www.ideals.illinois. edu/bitstream/handle/2142/8092/librarytrendsv45i3c_opt.pdf?sequence=1. Vezzoso, S., 2005. Document Delivery e invio Elettronico: profili comunitari alla luce del caso Subito. DANTE – Diritto d’Autore e Nuove Tecnologie 1 (1), 7–33. Available at: http://eprints.biblio.unitn.it/archive/00000916/ . Vezzoso, S., 2006. Subito and beyond: new challenges for library document delivery in Europe? In: Paper Presented at the IV Conference on Internet Document Delivery and Library Cooperation, DD Services and Electronic Resources: The User Needs, the Library Answers, 18–19 May 2006, Naples, Italy Available at: http://papers.ssrn.com/ sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1357322.

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Weber, D.C., 1976. A century of cooperative programs among academic libraries. College and Research Libraries 37 (3), 205–221. Wiley, L.N., 2004. License to deny? Publisher restrictions on document delivery from e-licensed journals. Interlending & Document Supply 32 (2), 94–102.

FURTHER READING Bernardini, E., Mangiaracina, S., 2011. The relationship between ILL/document supply and journal subscriptions. Interlending & Document Supply 39 (1), 9–25. Mangiaracina, S., Bernardini, E., August 13–19, 2016. Trends in Interlibrary Lending: A Longitudinal Data Analysis on Article Sharing in Italy. IFLA WLIC, Columbus, USA. http://library.ifla.org/1425/. Mangiaracina, S., Tugnoli, A., 2012. NILDE reloaded: a new system open to international interlibrary loan. Interlending & Document Supply 40 (2), 88–92. Mangiaracina, S., Zaetta, M., De Matteis, D., Tugnoli, A., Beghelli, E., Tenaglia, G., 2008. NILDE: developing a new generation tool for document delivery in Italy. Interlending & Document Supply 36 (3), 167–177. Mangiaracina, S., Cocever, C., Chiandoni, M., Arabito, S., 2014. Assessing the effectiveness of a national resource sharing system. Interlending & Document Supply 42 (2/3), 98–104.

CHAPTER 4

Resource Sharing: The Evolution OVERVIEW Much of the discussion throughout the book has dealt with illustrating how interlibrary loan units can evolve or transform existing systems to accommodate new user’s expectations and needs.While this is a necessary component when considering the future role resource sharing will play in the academic library, it is also incomplete. Explicit within the idea that academic library patrons needs and wants are evolving if not fundamentally changing is admission that there will be new types of requests and new methodologies that will need to be considered to meet their needs. This means that resource-sharing units will need to look beyond merely evolving services they must also investigate new ways of doing things. Rather than rethink resource sharing, they need to transform it. This transformation takes three forms. The first is an examination and acquisition of the new types of resources that have emerged in the last decade or so. Chief among these are eBooks, but there is also the more radical resource types like three-dimensional objects. Cyril Oberlander echoes the importance of eBooks in his chapter in the Interlibrary Loan Practices Handbook. He writes, “Two important activities for which resource sharing systems must develop solutions are lending electronic books and enhancing delivery service options” (Oberlander, 2011, p. 115). The second is an examination of new ways of tracking the items we send to each other. Logistical analysis is becoming an increasing area of expertise for resource-sharing units. With the growing ­capabilities for even the smallest libraries to access collections anywhere in the world through the Internet, the amount and complexity of items being sent is staggering. If as discussed previously a patron can log into WorldCat and search the globe for items to help their information need, then shipping becomes an increasingly complex task. As complexity increases, so does the need to track and examine the areas where the items are going. Finally, contemporary computer science has illustrated a new frontier for resource-sharing processionals. This frontier takes advantage of innovative computer techniques and mathematical modeling to bring about unparalleled analysis of resource-sharing activities. By harnessing predictive Resources Anytime, Anywhere ISBN 978-0-08-101989-4 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-101989-4.00004-3

Copyright © 2017 Ryan Litsey. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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analytics and machine-learning processes, resource-sharing units can grapple with new ways of processing resource-sharing requests as well as new ways of understanding the behavior of a collection. As the knowledge of resource-sharing behavior increases so does the ability to model this behavior mathematically. Mathematical modeling introduces the possibility of using predictive analytics to predict items that may be requested. Rather than resources when a patron wants them, an innovative resource-sharing unit can get resources before a patron knows they want them. However, before there can be a discussion of the forefront of resource sharing it is important to examine the new types of resources that patrons are coming to expect from the resource-sharing units.

NEW TYPES OF RESOURCES eBooks The most recent resource type that is gaining importance in both the academy and in public libraries are eBooks. In the book Twenty First Century Access Services, one of the chapter authors Tom Bruno echoes the call for eBooks. He writes, However, as journal content has shifted over time from majority print to born-­ digital publications now being the default, librarians must anticipate a reality where eBooks are the norm and not the exception; if the consumer e-book market is any indication, this day will come much sooner than we think. Bruno (2013, p. 56)

Bruno’s quote is an indication that resource-sharing librarians have accepted that the use of eBooks is an emerging type of resource that will be increasingly asked for by patrons.This creates a dilemma from both an advocacy standpoint and a supply standpoint. In terms of advocacy as the quote alludes there needs to be a consideration of the efforts that resource-sharing units undertook as journals became born-digital. As journal articles appeared more and more as native electronic items, new issues of access arose again. Resource sharing has always been centered on issues of access and the need for access. From the very beginning, with the desire to gain access to items at other universities, resource sharing has been geared around retrieving and sharing items. With the rise of electronic journals a new type of restriction was born. The digital access portions of many databases served to silo the journal collections of libraries once again. This means that academic libraries and libraries in general needed to address issues of access and sharing. They developed new policies and procedures to address these concerns. Things like

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the “rule of five” were compromises for sharing. With digital content, the ability to share becomes easier. While the use of electronic journals is not a settled matter it is a place where resource-sharing professionals can get lessons learned and apply them for eBooks. In the previous ­chapters case studies many of the supply-oriented consortia demonstrated the mechanisms that were developed to strike a balance between access and control. It is from these lessons that resource-sharing professionals must endeavor to strike a compromise for eBooks. As more and more universities purchase eBooks we are seeing a returning to the siloization of the early times of e-journals. Libraries and resource-­ sharing units need to work with the parties responsible for negotiating the eBook contracts to address issues of access. Libraries can work with collective bargaining consortia to develop favorable contracts to allow the sharing of eBooks. This is a critical need for academic libraries in particular. As the movement to born digital books continues the access that is presently enjoyed by having a physical book mailed will start to slip away. Therefore, what forms of compromise will work? To answer, those resource-sharing professionals can look to the lessons learned. One of the key points must be contractual allowances; many eBook vendors claim that they will allow the sharing of eBooks, but not much is written. There needs to be a codification of language to allow for the sharing of eBooks as part of the licensing agreement. In the past, there has not been much need for clarified language because the sharing mechanism did not exist. Libraries need to work to structure the language of the contracts to make allowances for resource sharing. There are examples of this already both from an electronic journal standpoint and from an eBooks standpoint. Some ways in which the contracts can be amended could be adding langue that allows the resource sharing of eBooks using the “prevailing technology” of the day.This is a very general statement. However, libraries can offer modified language that may specify a specific program that will be used. These are just two examples of how a library can alter the existing contracts to allow for expanded resource sharing options. As will be discussed later, there are mechanisms in place to allow for sharing, so the need to protect access becomes very important. The second key point is access. Many eBook vendors allow for a type of check out of the eBook from the home library for a limited time access. These often take the form of x number of simultaneous views, or x number of users per month. This type of access is difficult even from a home library, but it becomes a more pressing challenge when considering the ability to share these books via resource sharing. The challenge lies in the push

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and pull between the library and the vendor in much the same way libraries have learned from e-journal vendors. The argument is also that if we view the book as a physical item, then if that item is shipped, it would not be accessible at the home institution. That is an old mode of thinking, eBooks and e-journals are more alike in this way. There is no reason to restrict local access in favor of resource sharing since the item is electronic and the mechanism and cost for producing the book are already born by the publishers so sharing it is inconsequential. The argument may be that if we share these eBooks then no one will be willing to buy them; that, however, is a ruse. Resource sharing has not seen a decline in journal purchases with the rise of e-journals, and there will always be a need for immediate access. However, in the digital age a library cannot be faulted for wanting a more tailored approach to serving their patrons that is greater than just buying everything. There needs to be a common ground worked out between libraries and vendors about access to the titles. One possible area of agreement is time-limited access. In much the same way a regular book has a check out period, so to can the checkout period for an eBook be limited. This does not mean removing access to the home institution’s copy while one is being shared, it means limiting the time the item can be viewed as part of the resource-sharing initiative. It can also mean incorporating a type of “rule of five.” For example, an eBook can only be shared x number of times a year from a certain school. These are just preliminary examples of some of the compromises and agreements libraries need to work out with publishers. The eBook is a medium that will remain part of the library. It may never fully replace the physical book, but it is a new type of resource, and one that resource-sharing professionals need to ensure that access is maintained. This discussion is not exhaustive. It took a number of years for publishers and librarians to work compromises for e-journals. Those conversations continue to this day. It is important resource-sharing professionals recognize that as new types of resources find their way into the expectations of the patrons, they are prepared to advocate for access and sharing, lest we return to the siloed days of old. The second part of the eBook conundrum is the ability to share. Sharing of eBooks opens another type of discussion: one that takes into account the exact nature of what sharing looks like. Many libraries use systems like Overdrive or other pooling networks.This is not sharing. Pooling resources is just that.True sharing involves the ability to share with all parties. By pooling eBooks into a large collection, a library cannot truly share them, they merely

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expand the silo the books reside in. Pooling resources is perhaps a good first compromise but libraries need to look for mechanisms that can allow sharing across a wider variety of users. A few technologies out there can allow for this. One of them is Occam’s Reader. This system allows for the sharing of PDFbased eBooks to any library willing to make a request to member institutions. Each institution maintains its own collection but is capable of sharing these books. Occam’s Reader is not the only mechanism out there for this type of sharing. Some universities merely download and send the entire PDF to requesting institutions. The key here is not the chosen mechanisms but the nature of the sharing. This type of sharing should be the goal for resourcesharing units. Sharing that can offer time-limited access to any user that is capable of making a request to the owning institution.This is true sharing. By working to open the types of sharing possible then libraries can address some of the other issues surrounding eBooks. Chief among these is the concept of ownership. In determining, the ownership of these items can go a long way in opening the possibility for true sharing. Ownership of eBooks is a difficult discussion—one that is better served in a more focused venue.There are other types of resources gaining usage in the academic library as well that could be open to the potential for resource sharing. A second type of new resource that is gaining importance closely behind eBooks is research datasets.

Research Datasets There is growing concern for the validity of the research data that is generated in the academic community. Many of us can recall stories where research data has been proven false or is not reproducible. Replicability of data is a hallmark of a quality study.The need for replicability opens up new challenges for researchers trying to gain access to resources. More and more journals are publishing research data sets along with the articles that were created using that data for increased transparency or in the hopes that the studies can be reproduced. However, often the included data sets are abbreviated or there has been significant redaction to protect the intellectual property of the researcher or the journal. This is where resource-sharing units can help play a role in uncovering and providing access to this new type of resource. At their core, research datasets are merely large files. Many academic libraries have large file transfer services or in some cases the data sets themselves may reside in a library-provided data repository. If the data is accessible then the resource-sharing units need to look for ways to make that data available to other researchers. One of the ways this can be done is at the

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point of ingest. Resource-sharing units can work with research data management stakeholders on their respective campuses to add as a part of the storage of the data the permission to share the data through the resourcesharing process. This would be similar to the ways in which universities and libraries push for open access or ask faculty to place a copy of an article in the library repository and provide access along with the published version. Working to gain access to these datasets is the first step in the process of allowing these items to be accessible through resource-sharing systems. The second way resource-sharing units can develop ways to provide access is to work within the existing system to transfer large files back and forth between universities. Since there would be little good if the files were available but shareable, libraries need to work on both issues. To share large data sets, resource-sharing units will need to look at technologies that allow large file transfers. A number of commercially available systems can accommodate this process, such as Dropbox or Google Drive. Libraries can also consider in-house systems. Since the process of sharing a data set is essentially transferring a file to a server and downloading that file and deleting the original from the server, the process can be developed in house relatively easily. This is just a preliminary overview of the emerging resource of research data sets. However, libraries need to start to consider this resource since researchers are more and more consistently seeking research datasets for replicability of existing studies or to see how a researcher reached certain conclusions. Invariably, though, questions will arise about the use of new resources. Some of the more prominent questions are not too dissimilar from the questions that were first asked when e-journals were shared electronically or are being asked now with eBooks. Libraries should take lessons from the past to help navigate answers to these questions. For example, one question may be that datasets often represent the culmination of a lot of time and effort on the part of the researcher; if we are to share these, would other faculty use this data for their own purposes? The answer is yes, and in many ways, that is what composes the community of research. In addition, there are ways of providing access to items without necessarily giving access to the complete data. In many ways, this argument is like the notion of “if we ship a book to another library couldn’t they just copy it and have a book?” In practice, though, libraries have worked to find a middle ground to providing access while respecting the needs and output of researchers. Datasets are no different. Another objection may come from the idea that datasets are a proprietary research artifact. That is true, but so is a journal article, and libraries have found ways to respect the research object as well as provide

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access to other researchers. As article validity and replicability become an increasingly important issue in academic research, more and more researchers will seek to gain access to the research datasets. Resource-sharing units need to consider emerging resource needs as they look to the future of what researchers and library patrons will need to help accomplish their academic mission. There are also more innovative resources as well. One of the most innovative is three-dimensional (3D) objects.

Three-dimensional objects Many libraries, both academic and public, have 3D printers. While initially serving as novel technology displays or potential hobbyist and learning tools, there is another potential avenue of 3D printer usage that has yet to be examined.This avenue lies in the challenge all 3D printers face.The ability to design 3D objects is a large barrier to entry for many potential users. While there is the possibility to download objects from open databases, those objects are already designed to certain specifications and they may not meet an academic need. Since the barrier for entry is relatively high, universities and libraries have an opportunity to help potential users of the technology gain access. One way is to hire 3D-object designers. Academic libraries and public libraries have the ability to tap existing talent to design objects for use my patrons whether in the classroom or for other needs. If the library is going to play a role in the design of such objects, they also have an obligation to provide access to these objects for other patrons to use. In much the same way that libraries have played a role in preserving and providing access to other resources, preserving and providing access to 3D objects is also a potential library activity. One way a library can do this is to take away the barrier of design. For example, academic libraries have access to a wealth of talent in the form of student assistants, many of whom practice 3D design as part of coursework or a hobby. Hiring just one student can afford the library the ability to create and deploy 3D objects to helping variety of ways.Whether it is replacing items that are damaged like anatomy models, or ideally, it could be for faculty and other instructors to use for teaching in the classroom. This is how libraries can bring access to new resources. The creation and design of 3D objects by libraries for use by faculty to enhance the classroom experience. If a library is going to take the time to design and provide access to such items then the ability to share them is also a possibility. This introduces the potential for a new type of resource sharing: the resource sharing of 3D objects. Now, some may argue that there are free and open source communities dedicated for this, but

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there are very few that are focused on designing objects that can serve an academic need. While many universities and public schools have 3D printers within the library, very few are deploying them to help aide in the classroom. If included with that was larger access to other larger academic-based object repositories it would be very simple to set up a mechanism that would allow these objects to be shared via resource-sharing mechanisms. eBooks and 3D objects are just two examples of new types of resources patrons will be expecting in the years to come. Resource-sharing units need to be ready to handle the new type of patron expectations. To address this there is also a need for new types of logistical tracking as well.

NEW TYPES OF TRACKING When interlibrary loan began, the technologies for transferring items between libraries were rudimentary. Logistical analysis was in its infancy. However, as students have become more and more accustomed to ondemand information, the expectations they bring to their interactions with the library change. One of the changes in expectations deals with an increased need for greater control and understanding of the status of their requests. This is due in large part to the technologies implemented to process interlibrary loan requests and the development of web-based tracking. If a student can log into an account and make a request for an item, have that item searched, boxed and shipped, there will be a growing need to increase capabilities for tracking and locating the progress of that item.The student sees this type of technology in everyday interactions. An Amazon order is provided with a tracking number; there are statuses for ordering pizza, even. This type of information will naturally begin to seep into the expectations of patrons. Increased understanding of the micro-level details of a transaction lends a sense of empowerment to the user. If the patron is able to track their items in real time, they have a better sense of what is happening and gain a better understanding of the process of resource sharing as a whole. Increased need for logistical tracking can take two forms, one internal and one external to the resourcesharing department. The first, internal tracking, can be very useful for resource-sharing units in providing statistical understanding of the movement of item within a given area. The second can provide the patron with a better understanding of the processes involved in providing an item as well as give them a better idea, which is a benefit for all the parties involved.

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Internal/interrelational tracking In an era of shrinking resources and sharing budgets, the need to justify and conserve resources becomes increasingly important. One way the resourcesharing units can do this is to better understand how items move within the resource sharing of a particular library but also in relation to other libraries. Nancy Kress and Lars Leon wrote one of the most important articles on resource sharing, and it concerned the cost of resource sharing. In that article, the authors go to great lengths to illustrate the cost of a particular transaction and how those costs are projected into the equipment. The ultimate goal is to determine the true cost of a transaction. This can have the effect of both justifying costs and looking for areas where efficiencies can be had. However, the challenge with internal research of this type is costs are not always entirely bundled with expenditure, per se. In actuality, there is a cost born of inefficient timing and poor choice in shippers.This necessitates an analysis of the movement of items as well with any given group. Additionally, merely analyzing the cost of transactions within a specific unit does not provide a holistic image. It is important to examine the movement of items with a given consortia since the cost of a transaction must also take into account consortial membership as well. These premises lead to the necessity to develop a more comprehensive logistical tracking system: a ­system that can expand beyond the internal calculations of the resourcesharing unit and meet the needs of a tracking system that can take into account the actions within a given consortia. Devising such a method can help to examine inefficiencies within the larger system as well as provide justifications of cost on a much larger scale. For example, how many resource-sharing units truly know the value or detriment of consortial membership? True resource-sharing units can run calculations and compare the number of requests that they get for little or no charge versus the number of requests that are filled for a cost. They can also run analysis of the equipment and determine if they are a net lender or net borrower. All of this is useful information. However, very few resource-sharing units can determine how long it takes for an item to be delivered from one place to another of a longer period of time. Sure, some of the courier services offer tracking as well as most major shippers, but there is little consolidated data for tracking the movement of items from within a consortia. Data of this type can be invaluable in determining both the logistics of the consortia as well as the cost of shipping items between each member institution. For example, if resource-sharing units are able to determine the relationship of one institution to another, there opens up innumerable options from a

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shipping standpoint alone. Perhaps it is better to ship to one institution via courier and another via expedited delivery. This type of interrelational data can help resource-sharing units better understand how and where items move from outside of the internal universities resource-sharing unit. There also opens up the possibility of cost analysis as well. How much does it cost to ship an item from one place to another, and how many items are lost in transit—this type of data can be understood as external tracking data.There is a second advantage to establishing this type of logistical data and that is the patron expectations.

External tracking There are two types of external tracking. The first is the actual tracking of items that leaves the building. This is different than the logistical tracking offered earlier that is designed to give insight into movement and areas of opportunity for improvement. The second type is patron expectations of external tracking. This type of tracking focused on providing patrons with updated information concerning the location of their items. In regards to tracking the items, that leave the building, resource-sharing units have lost a lot of money is literally lost items. Resource-sharing units in the age of budget frugality need to develop methods to better track and monitor the items that leave the building. One way is to develop mechanisms to allow for the input of ILL numbers and shipping IDs.This type of tracking system can work well in laying the foundation for tracking items that leave the building. Universities and libraries in general spend thousands of dollars each year in lost books and misdelivered items. The technology exists today to create systems that can allow for rudimentary tracking of shipped items. The most important reason to develop external tracking systems is to give the patrons an added expectation of where their items are in the resource-sharing process. In the age of Amazon and eBay, patrons are more and more familiar with getting information about the process of items they have requested. It is safe to assume that they would bring these expectations with them to the library as well. Given that the most prevalent resource-sharing management system, ILLiad, provides users with a status by status list of the different phases their transactions have gone through, the expectation has already been set. One place though where these items are not checked is in the shipment of physical loans. Hence, the second important reason to develop an external tracking system. To be able to provide patrons with a better understanding of where their items are in process. Understanding

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where their items are can have an empowering effect. By understanding and tracking their items they can feel more comfortable that their request are being moved through the channel as well as the resource-sharing units can set expectations for delivery. Having a tracking system cannot only help set better departmental expectations but it can also communicate better how money is spent and where inefficiencies lie within the resource-sharing processes external to the individual resource-sharing unit. Tracking and logistical analysis, in general, offers the resource-sharing unit the opportunity to inform patrons and the unit itself of the activities that have previously been unknown. It can offer a more complete picture of the movement of items external to the resource-sharing unit itself. The final idea in the evolution or transformation of resource sharing is the idea of getting items before a patron may know that they want them. This type of resource sharing takes advantage of cutting-edge computer science, machine learning, and predictive analytics.

PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS AND RESOURCE SHARING Machine learning and predictive analytics are a natural progression for libraries in general and resource-sharing unit specifically. While a progression, for sure, the ideas and processes are at least a decade away from being fully realized. Whenever there are opportunities for progress currently, the methods of machine learning and predictive analytics can provide a much needed insight and opportunity for viewing the workflow in an entirely new way. To better understand how these cutting-edge techniques can be incorporated into a resource-sharing unit, it is necessary to u ­ nderstand what is meant by the terms machine learning and predictive analytics. One thing to cover at the outset of the discussion. Machine learning is not artificial intelligence. Machine learning is one aspect of the larger whole that could be understood as artificial intelligence. A good example of machine learning is: machine learning is the books one would read, and artificial intelligence would be the paper that is written after the books are read. The books serve as data that can be cataloged and tracked by a learning machine. Artificial intelligence would take liberties with the data and reassemble it into new information. Machine learning allows a machine to interpret a set of data and learn from those interpretations to apply them to another similar set of outputs. Artificial intelligence is a holistic way of computerized thinking that can confront undetermined parameters and execute actions. The key distinction in this example is awareness. Machine

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learning is a series of algorithms designed to interpret data. Artificial intelligence is an awareness of self. Machine learning is the focus for this new type of resource sharing. Resource-sharing units should think of machine learning as an opportunity to analyze something libraries are already very good at collecting, and that is large amounts of data. For a more concise definition of machine learning, we can look at the work of Jason Bell. In the book, the author defines machine learning as Using computing, we design systems that can learn from data in a manner of being trained. The systems might learn and improve with experience, and with time, refine a model that can be used to predict outcomes of questions based on previous learning. Bell (2015, p.2)

Machine learning, then, based on this definition, is the refinement of an algorithm used to assess a large amount of data. Practically put, think of a filtration system: at the first stage of any filter is a process to filter out large particles.The second stage filters out smaller particles and each stage after that is able to filter finer and finer materials until some pure remains.This is a type of machine learning. An algorithm is constructed that is then applied to a data set. From the initial result of the first data set the algorithm is run again and those two results are then compared to one another to see if a refinement needs to be made. From that comparison, the model is adjusted by the machine that is the learning component of machine learning. The different successive models are often called generations. With each passing generation, the algorithm refines its processes until the final result is a pure as it possible with the data being collected. How can this apply to resource sharing? One thing that libraries are very good at is collecting and storing data. We store massive amounts of data, from circulations, to resourcesharing requests, to course reserves, to the data on the collection itself. This data is essentially stagnant. It sits in a database and is periodically accessed but it does not really do any “work.” Machine learning is a way to use the data in a method that can increase customer service and automation. Take, for example, interlibrary loan requests. Large universities process hundreds of thousands of requests each year. This is a tremendous amount of data. They also may catalog millions of circulations. This data can be used in a machine learning environment. If we were to ask a group of resource-sharing professionals what their most requested item at their respective institution was, they could probably rattle off a list of the books they thought were most requested. There is a way, though, to determine precisely the books most requested in a given year

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or semester. That way is to count them. A human cannot possibly count that many transactions and then be able to report accurately that information, but a computer can do it quite easily. Once they are counted, the machine can then arrange those requests from most to least requested. This can be very useful anecdotal data for collection development, etc. However, once they are counted, if the counting is done in a particular fashion, say, yearly or by semester, that can form the foundation of a machine-learning algorithm generation. A generation of data is data gathered and sorted under a certain set of parameters. In the case of this example, it is data gathered for all interlibrary loan requests in a given year. That can form the first generation of data. Now if we ask the machine to execute the same parameters again, except we change the data to be either the year before of the year after, we establish a basis for comparison. This is where the mathematical modeling of predictive analytics comes into play. The machine is capable of taking a large amount of data and sorting it into a number of different generations based on the parameters of the algorithm. These generations form the framework for the machine to learn from each generation of data and refine the information it outputs in the form of statistical prediction or predictive analytic. Predictive analytics is the mathematical process used to determine a prediction from a set of order data over a period. Alternatively, as Eric Siegel (2013, p. 11) put it, “Predictive Analytics – technology that learns from experience (data) to predict the future behavior of individuals in order to drive better decisions.” Predictive analytics plays out in a variety of ways already in modern society often unseen. Each time, Amazon or Netflix offers a suggestion for purchase of viewing that is a predictive analytic algorithm learning from a viewer’s or user’s previous choices to predict something they would potentially want. Each time the user declines the purchase or viewer, the algorithm adjusts the statistical modeling and produces another suggestion. This is the crux of machine learning and predictive analytics. Each generation of data is compared to the next and each time a certain event happens it either strengthens the statistical model or weakens it. The more generations that are created the better the model can come to represent an accurate prediction of future events. This type of data comparison, if right, is the strength of libraries in general and resource sharing in particular. Thus sheer number of requests we get each year provide an ongoing treasure trove of data that can be analyzed. This type of data is often called “big data.” How can a resource-sharing unit use big data to improve the

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customer experience of library patrons? The answer is simple: by being able to predict the books in such a way that they are able to have the book or item in the library before the patron knows they want it. This may seem like science fiction, but the process is relatively simple for a modern machine learning system. Imagine if a resource-sharing unit were to run a predictive analytic, it would look something like this. The machine would catalog all of the requests for a given time frame. These requests would be grouped into generations, say a fall semester or a spring semester. From that grouping, the machine would use predictive statistical modeling to determine the probability that the same book would be requested the next generation. That prediction would take the form of a percentage. For example, the machine is 90% sure that the book would be requested next year.The machine would also output a confidence interval; the confidence interval indicates just that: the confidence the system has in its prediction. If the confidence interval is low and the prediction is high that means the machine has determined a high likelihood that the item would be requested the following semester. While having one or two semesters or generations worth of data would not build a very confident prediction, having several years or a decade’s worth the prediction would refine itself to a narrower and narrower accuracy. From that, the system could opt to put a recommendation of what the resource-sharing professional could do next. It could suggest that the request be made ahead of time for example given the probability that the item will be requested. If the model is accurate the requested item would effectively have been ordered and be in the library around the time the patron thought to request it. The resource-sharing unit would have essentially made a request for an item before a patron knew they wanted it. It is less science fiction and more of a mathematical process. While these are some of the more cutting edge aspects of resource sharing, examining the case studies below will demonstrate how these processes have been implemented and some preliminary results have been gathered.

4.1 CASE STUDY: ONLINE-BASED INTERLIBRARY LOAN STATISTICAL KIT (OBILLSK) OBILLSK is an acronym for Online-Based Interlibrary Loan Statistical Kit. The OBILLSK system was designed to track interlibrary loan transactions within a library consortia. Due to the large amount of data required, OBILLSK is considered a “big data” project.There are three key components

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of the system to include data acquisition, analysis, and delivery. The system consists of installable software and a web application developed by Texas Tech University Libraries. The software and application were developed with Microsoft Visual Studio.The project took approximately 1 year and 6 months to complete. The data acquisition component was developed after researching the schema of the ILLiad Resource Sharing Management software (ILLiad) database provided by Atlas Systems. The first goal was to harvest data from all institutions in a uniform manner allowing for efficient data management. Our second goal was to obtain comma separated values (.csv) files from each institution in a convenient and seamless workflow incorporating user experience best practices. Prior to developing the software, we wrote a series of SQL queries to select the specific ILLiad database table fields and records required for the analysis.The queries were modified and tested with our internal ILLiad database. This process enabled us to evaluate database performance and software feasibility. To obtain the data, we developed downloadable software that can be installed on desktop computers, typically those of interlibrary loan (ILL) librarians. To avoid compatibility concerns, our software platform and requirements mirrored that of ILLiad’s software client. The software was written in C-Sharp and compiled into an executable (.exe) file. The software presents an input form for users to enter database login credentials specific to their institution’s instance of an ILLiad database. After authentication, the software executes the SQL queries and produces a .csv file. To avoid any privacy concerns, the user is prompted to save the file locally for review prior to sending. The last step of the software provides a direct link to the website where the user can select and upload the file to our web server. We constructed a Microsoft SQL Server database to store the uploaded data. The data analysis component was the most complicated portion of the project. Specific metrics such as borrowing and lending turnaround times for articles and loans, in-transit times, and institutional comparisons were required calculations. These calculations needed to be performed daily at a minimum. As of this writing, the database table that stores the data for analysis holds approximately 8 million records from 30 academic library institutions. The best solution was to incorporate stored procedures in the database. Stored procedures are basically scripts that can execute SQL queries, perform mathematical calculations, and create or modify records. Our logic of using stored procedures was to minimize the workload on the web

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application. We wrote a separate stored procedure for each metric as to modularize the workflow in an object-oriented model. The results are stored in secondary database tables which are referenced by the web application. We used Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio to build the queries and stored procedures. The delivery of the statistical analysis incorporated a variety of data visualization methods and techniques. Our goal was to provide a simple snapshot of the calculated metrics and geographic locations of interlibrary loan transactions. We designed a dashboard-type user interface with key data along with navigation, tabs, and panels that expand into more detailed information.The website is an ASP.NET application written in C-Sharp for the server-side programming. The user interface (UI) incorporates of variety of front-end frameworks. These include Bootstrap, jQuery, ShieldUI, and jVectorMap. Bootstrap and jQuery are common open source JavaScript and CSS libraries. These libraries assist web developers with responsive design, navigation, and cosmetics of a website layout. ShieldUI is a licensed JavaScript/ HTML5 UI framework that includes interactive graphs and charts. The UI also displays a map of the United States with markers and counts indicating where lending items have been sent. We used jVectorMap under the free GNU General Public License to present the map. All of these frameworks are HTML5 compliant and properly render on mobile devices. To populate the map, we store latitude and longitude coordinates of member institutions in our database. We developed a Python script that reads the information from the database and generates a text (.txt) file. The text file is formatted as JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) to work with jVectorMap. The Python script is executed daily using a Windows scheduled task. Finally, the web browser receives an Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) request and populates the map markers. There were several obstacles to overcome during the development phases of OBILLSK. First, the file size of the uploaded .csv files became rather larger, approximately 300 MB. The web application is hosted by Windows Server 2012. The default upload limit set in Internet Information Services (IIS) is 30 MB. We had to increase the upload limit in IIS to 500 MB and set the upload limit in the web application configuration file. The second obstacle was the database performance while executing the stored procedures. Due to the amount of records that required querying, the six stored procedures were taking approximately 2 hours total to complete. We realized that critical unique identifiers,

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such as ILL and transaction numbers, were not properly indexed in the database. Once we created indexes on these two fields, the stored procedures completed in 10–20 minutes. In conclusion, the OBILLSK project is considered a successful endeavor from ILL management and technical perspectives.The data presented in the web application provided never seen before insight to library administrators including potential cost savings strategies, shipping methods, and metric comparisons within a consortia. The decision to utilize third-party frontend frameworks for the web application proved to be effective.This allowed developers more time to focus on server-side programming and database management. We learned that a good balance of server-side versus clientside scripting technologies is a key factor in developing an efficient large scale web application. Source: Scott Luker,Texas Tech University Libraries

4.2 CASE STUDY: AUTOMATED LIBRARY INFORMATION EXCHANGE NETWORK (ALIEN) ALIEN conception The Automated Library Information Exchange Network (ALIEN) began as an add-on to OBILLSK, a project our group was working on to study the turnaround times for ILL transactions between university libraries. For OBILLSK to work, ILL transaction data is pulled from the university’s ILLiad database. Only information about the book and ILL transaction is pulled from the database; no personal information is ever used by either OBILLSK or ALIEN. Since we already had the robust transaction data from OBILLSK, we decided to expand our data analysis past just turnaround times and into making predictions for future requests. The next section of this case study looks closer into how ALIEN built off of the existing OBILLSK system to become more than just an add-on. The final section explains some of the current and future changes happening to ALIEN that will allow for more accurate and relevant predictions.

ALIEN analysis ALIEN works from the same transaction data that OBILLSK uses. ALIEN transforms the transaction data into information about the number of book requests. ALIEN then makes predictions about future requests based on the book requests from the transactions file. This section of the case study is

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spent exploring how ALIEN predicts future transactions from the same data that OBILLSK uses to calculate turnaround times. The next section looks into how the data ALIEN uses has changed based on what we learned from the initial predictions. When looking at the ILLiad database, OBILLSK generates a .csv file of the ILL transactions to work from. The first incarnation of ALIEN used the same transaction .csv file generated by OBILLSK. Instead of concentrating on the timestamps of the transaction status changes like OBILLSK, ALIEN is more concerned with what book is being requested. A Python script combs through the .csv file to generate a new .csv file with the number of times a book was requested, whether the transaction was completed or cancelled, in a semester. If a transaction goes through all the status changes needed to be considered a completed request, the request is counted as complete. Otherwise the request is considered cancelled but is still used to make predictions. This new book-counts .csv file will have a book’s OCLC number, the calendar year of the requests for that book, the number of requests for that book for the spring, summer, and fall semesters, and the number of book requests for each week of the year. A single book can have multiple entries in this file based on how many calendar years it has been requested. Once we were able to narrow down what data we needed for ALIEN, it was time to make some changes to how much of the OBILLSK data we used. The main difference in how ALIEN and OBILLSK look at the ILL data is the amount of time the data is relevant. OBILLSK looks at data from the past few months to give the most accurate picture of the latest turnaround times. In ALIEN’s case, even the oldest data is relevant when training ALIEN to predict future requests. We have around 10 years of data in the ILLiad database, but ALIEN was taking several hours to process all of the data that the OBILLSK client generated. Since we had identified the OBILLSK data that ALIEN didn’t need, we created a modified OBILLSK client for ALIEN that ignored a large portion of the data OBILLSK was collecting. By using this new ALIEN client, we are able to process the transaction .csv file in a few minutes rather than a few hours. The second step for ALIEN to make predictions is running a separate Python script to analyze and learn from the book counts .csv file. The book counts file is already broken down by calendar year and semester, so ALIEN begins by using the oldest calendar year as a basis for future

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predictions. Every book record after the oldest calendar year is used to adjust the prediction for that book more accurately. For example, a book with requests from 2014 to 2016 will have a prediction for a range of the number of requests in the spring, summer, and fall semesters of 2017. This prediction is initially based on the number of requests in the spring, summer, and fall semesters of 2014 and is adjusted by the number of requests received in the spring, summer, and fall semesters of 2015 and 2016. If the actual number of requests is within ALIEN’s predicted range, ALIEN will become more confident in its prediction for that book and predict a smaller range for the next year. If the actual number of requests is outside ALIEN’s predicted range, ALIEN will become unsure of its prediction and will predict a wider range for the next year. Upon reviewing ALIEN’s predictions, it became clear that we were missing relevant data about the requests that could not be found in the ILLiad database. Many of the predictions gave a nice prediction curve that came close to the actual number of requests for that book, but there was a handful of books that had ALIEN second guessing itself with every year. The final section of this case study will explain how ALIEN is adapting to work around the lack of data.

ALIEN evolution Even though ALIEN’s predictions met our expectations in many cases, we were not satisfied with the number of outlier cases we had. To get around these outlier cases, we have greatly expanded the data we look at. This section deals with the lack of data problem and how we are working around it. The biggest cause of our outlier cases was the absence of an adequate amount of training data. ALIEN would need hundreds of years of data about a single book to make the best predictions. The data in the ILLiad database started recording in 2006, so the chance of obtaining hundreds of years of training data is practically zero.There is also the problem of a book’s request lifespan being under 5 years for most of our cases.This short lifespan can be attributed to such causes as new book editions or a changing curriculum or faculty. While smaller new book editions could be handled with some additional computation, there is not an efficient way to get the book preferences of past, present, and future professors. To get around the problems of looking at singular books, we’ve begun to look at the books of the library as a whole.

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To shift the focus from the book to the library, data clustering is being incorporated into ALIEN. Data clustering takes a large set of data and groups similar data together into a small number of clusters. Instead of looking at just the number of requests for a book, ALIEN now looks at the subject and genre of the book. By querying WorldCat and obtaining a list of OCLC numbers from the book counts .csv file, ALIEN now has the subject and genre for all the books that have been requested through ILL by the Texas Tech University Library. The future of ALIEN involves obtaining the subject and genre for all the books in the Texas Tech collection and circulation data. After compiling all of the subject and genre data, ALIEN can make various recommendations on how to improve the library’s ILL requests, circulation, and collection. Source:Weston Mauldin,Texas Tech University Libraries

CONCLUSION In this chapter there was an effort made to demonstrate some of the more cutting edge processes and procedures on the horizon for resource sharing. As students interact more and more with technology, the things they will be able to do will exponentially increase. Students will bring questions that have not been previously thought. By harnessing cutting-edge computer technology, resource-sharing units can help alleviate the growing problems of numbers of requests or the desire for a better understanding for the patrons of where their items are in the process of getting from point A to point B.

REFERENCES Bell, J., 2015. Machine Learning: Hands-on for Developers and Technical Professionals. John Wiley & Sons, Indianapolis. Bruno, T., 2013. Interlibrary loan and document delivery. In: Dawes, T.A., Krasulski, M.J. (Eds.), Twenty First Century Access Services: On the Front Line of Academic Librarianship. Association of College and Research Libraries, Chicago, IL, pp. 43–63. Oberlander, C., 2011. The future of interlibrary loan. In: Weible, C.L., Janke, K.L. (Eds.), Interlibrary Loan Practices Handbook. American Library Association, Chicago, IL, pp. 110–119. Siegel, E., 2013. Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, buy, Lie, or Die. Wiley, Hoboken, NJ.

CHAPTER 5

Where Do We Go From Here? OVERVIEW Interlibrary loan began as a small offshoot of the larger development of centralized library services. In the early 19th century the amount of books and availability of information in the United States began to expand at a pace that libraries were unable to keep up with. This led to the need for libraries to coordinate the cataloging and processing of published books. The tertiary effect of shared library cataloging was the increased ability to share these items back and forth. The early version of interlibrary loan had this library service as a small part of the library. Given the inherently physical nature of shipping a book from one place to another there was little impetus to use the service to gain access to resources that were needed on a shorter notice. However, as the 20th century came to a close, a shift started to happen. The development of technology in the form of integrated computer networks lead to a sea change with how libraries were able to interact with each other. The shared catalog became a much more efficient process. Libraries no longer needed to physically catalog items; machine readable systems began to lighten the load of cataloging. As the catalogs became more and more open to external query the need and ability for sharing grew exponentially. What also started to happen was the movement of interlibrary loan from a disparate, basement-like processing to a more integrated part of the library’s services, and in addition, with the development and access of e-journals. When articles became accessible and transmittable through electronic means the interlibrary loan departments saw another movement into a more up front role in the library. Now the possibility existed for an interlibrary loan unit to be able to gain access to items with increased speed to meet an information need in a shorter period of time. This trend continues to this day, and at the beginning of the 21st century we see the next evolution of interlibrary loan. This is the evolution from interlibrary loan to resource sharing. The terminology change marks also a fundamental shift in understanding, execution, and services offered. No longer is resource sharing a small part of the overall library services, in many ways Resources Anytime, Anywhere ISBN 978-0-08-101989-4 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-101989-4.00005-5

Copyright © 2017 Ryan Litsey. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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resource sharing is now the most visible part of the library. Not only is resource sharing part of the library, we see the need for resource sharing play out in the public consciousness in general. For example, the twitter hashtag #icanhazpdf is a perfect example of mainstream resource sharing. Resource sharing today functions like a library within a library. The shift from obscure library processes to integrated library systems underlies the fundamental change inherent within resource sharing. The focus of this chapter is to take a look back at some of the arguments from the previous chapters with an eye toward practical solutions we can all implement to help bring about a resource-sharing evolution. The final section will endeavor to answer the question of where do we go from here. This fundamental change from interlibrary loan to resource sharing is marked by the change in terminology has along with it a number of new considerations. Chief among these are the staff and librarians involved in the process, and from there, an evolution in the groups we interact with and gain access to items. Third, the items we are requesting are different than have ever been before. Fourth, the development of technologies can help resource-sharing units create a customizable workflow that meets the local need of their individual library patrons. Finally, we examine of what resource-sharing units may be able to expect in the future.

STAFF IMPLICATIONS Resource sharing plays a much larger role in the academic library in particular today. The need for students, faculty, and staff to gain access to the most current forms of knowledge is underlined by the increased ability to disseminate and share that knowledge. Library patrons can be inundated with the ability to gain access to information as speeds not possible before. This requires that librarians and resource-sharing staff become accustomed to a new way of doing business. The new models are more in line with logistical management than library services. Departments need to become more adaptive and flexible to be able to meet a growing variety of needs and wants. The ways this can be accomplished are in altering the way resource sharing is viewed. In the past the chief concern has been costs and turnaround times. However, these are mere by-products of a successful resource-sharing system. This is a challenging statement for most library professionals, but rest assured it is a possibility.To accomplish this it is important that librarians shift their perspective when thinking about resource sharing. Librarians need to view the process as a series of systemized

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gateways. What is meant by this is we must look at resource sharing as a holistic system that is made up of a variety of parts—some that can be controlled and some that cannot be controlled. There are three main components to any resource-sharing system. The patron, the staff, and the outside provider. Each of these systems needs to be understood and optimized in order for the resource-sharing unit to function efficiently and effectively. It is incumbent upon the librarians and staff within the source-sharing unit to look for opportunities to develop efficient methods of aiding in all three phases.

Patron phase In regards to the patron phase. The key here is to understand the information-seeking behavior of the patron. Often we are struck with the minutiae of each request, however, paying attention to the nitty gritty details of each request can often cause us to lose the forest in favor of the trees. What is meant by this is there needs to be a critical examination, for example, of the requesting form. Does it ask too many questions? Are there opportunities to ask a few less? On this, librarians should consider the idea that worrying about the exception can often lead to an inefficient system. For example, a large-scale resource-sharing unit will process around 100,000 requests each year. That averages out to around 1,900 requests a week, which is around 400 requests a week for a staff of five people. Even if the staff are 99% accurate for an entire year the department will still make 1000 mistakes. Mistakes are an inherent part of the resource-sharing system, and we as library professionals need to come to accept that.What is incumbent upon us is to not be bogged down in what amounts to a technicality. I have a saying I often use that I learned from Ben Walker, one of my first library managers.The saying goes, “Never write a rule for an exception.” What is meant by this is we often in the library world seek to write exceptions for the errors that we see. The problem with this, though, is those errors are often outliers; what may in fact be happening 99% of the time is perfect execution. If we attempt to remove error from the system, we may in fact cause a cascade of problems that could have unintended consequences. What needs to happen is resource-sharing professionals must become accustomed to a certain amount of error inherent in the process. How can we as librarians then develop systems that do not overlook fundamental errors but at the same time prevent the urge to chase outliers? The first way is to critically look at each of the requesting pages a resource-sharing unit uses, and ask what is the minimum amount of information required to help match what the

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patron wants with a library that owns this item. This type of reductionist thinking is a step in the right direction to creating an efficient system without becoming bogged down in the outliers. For example, how many resource-sharing units still ask for an OCLC number on their requesting forms? This is not a number that is known by the patron often but it is a number useful to the library staff. It is in striking these types of balances that librarians can achieve a certain balance of the needs of the patrons with the needs of the staff. In addition, when considering the role technology can play in enhancing this process, it is possible to use the requesting webpage to mask the true nature of a piece of information as well. Perhaps the OCLC number could have as a specific placeholder some title that points to the ILS or other piece of information that can help the patron locate the number using terminology they are familiar with. Now the initial reaction to the idea of paring down a form would be to tell a story about the one patron that uses the number all the time and if we remove such a number, they will be able to use the library. While this may be true, again think about balancing the needs of one patron against the other 100,000 requests. It is in this opportunity that we can begin to develop a system that can be both efficient and effective without becoming mired in too many details. Another way a resource-sharing professional can help the patrons is in lowering the barriers of entry to library systems. What is meant by this is often libraries do a very good job of explaining how to use library systems. The problem with this is much of what a patron interacts with in terms of the Internet or an electronic medium does not require instructions. Next time you are on the Internet look for instructions on how to Google something, or instructions on how to fill out a form for Facebook.These are systems that are used extensively every day and they require very little in the way of instructions. If there are instructions for how to use your resource-sharing systems then there may be an issue. It is incumbent upon us as information professionals not to teach patrons how to use library services, but rather to design services that are intuitive for the user. This is critical for the resources sharing unit. The patron may be approaching the resources sharing unit at the moment of information need.They may currently be doing research or are inspired to seek new knowledge; the last thing a resource-sharing unit would want to do is throw up a large number of roadblocks to accessing information. A good example of this is the login screen in general. The most widely used resource-sharing software, ILLiad, has an account creation system. How many libraries require a patron to create a separate account for campus

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general use and ILLiad use? The necessity for having to remember two accounts and two logins is a natural barrier for patron usage. This is what barriers for entry mean. We need to endeavor to remove the barriers such that we are not providing overly burdensome instructions for using library services. The barriers only further separate the library resources from the user. These are a few examples of how an effective resource-sharing unit can look for ways to improve services offered. The next phase to consider for improvement is the staff phase.

Staff phase The staff phase is the next opportunity the resource-sharing unit has to improve the methods it employs in delivering serves as well as continue to lay the groundwork for efficient and effective service delivery. This is accomplished by examining the staff workflows for areas where there is a need for oversight and areas where there is little need for oversight. There are certain choke points in any resource-sharing workflow. These choke points were highlighted in the discussion concerning logistical management. The choke points serve as places where there needs to be a certain modicum of accuracy. For example, in identifying the requests that need to be sent out, or in matching lending requests to the book from the shelf. Staff members best handle these choke points. This is a somewhat controversial statement. Student workers should not be matching borrowing requests to be sent out, nor should they be doing lending searching. If the argument is that there are too many requests for staff to handle, then there are possibly other areas on the workflow where efficiency needs to be had to free up staff to handle the matching of requests that need to be sent out. Why should students not undertake such an activity? Primarily because students are just that. They are temporary workers who are likely in school for a task completely unrelated to libraries or resource sharing. While student workers are an invaluable part of the resource-sharing unit, the choke points are moments when accuracy counts. Accuracy should not rely solely on temporary workers. The reason for this is as the request is put into the resource-sharing networks it becomes part of a larger supply-chain process. If there are inaccuracies or incorrect information there is potential for slowing down upstream activities in getting the item the patron is want to from point a to point b as fast as possible. The improvement of quality control at choke points will enhance accuracy and improve reliability of requests being sent out. The final piece of understanding from a staff point is the

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need for flexibility. The development of technologies specifically designed to handle the processing of ILL requests means a great number of staff members and students can help in processing requests. This will naturally lead to an increase in the number of people who are working a request at any given moment. The increase in numbers of people can also open areas of opportunity for having cross-training and allowing for multiple people to work in a variety of different ways. As resourcesharing development evolves from a patron standpoint the offices themselves will need to evolve to account for the variety of ways in which a request can be handled or the different methods used to request items. This can naturally lead to a more flexible staff.

The lender phase Each resource-sharing unit will at some point be the lender in a resource-sharing exchange. The point to this process aside from the choke points discussion that happened in the staff phase is an understanding of the role the lender plays in the resource-sharing process. Often, the lenders will conditionalize requests or ask for an excruciating amount of detail in regards to a specific transaction. One thing to think about before engaging in such activities is to think about the role the lender plays in the supply chain for that item. For example, given the prevalence of automated systems in resource sharing, notifying a library that they may have already sent a request for the exact same item is often not helpful. Especially when considering that there is a good possibility that the requests are automatically sent out. While much of this will change as libraries adopt new technologies designed to search catalogs automatically or directly determine availability prior to requesting, there will still be mistakes. It is important not to think of these as a malicious attempt to upset the lending library; it is merely a result of large volume processing. In fact, by conditionalizing with the information that it is a duplicate request merely serves to slow down the supply chain for that time. Considering the process by which a conditional is determined, conditionalizing for items that are on reserve or checked out is not as useful as well. The resource-sharing units are focused on leveraging technology to get items in an efficient and effective manner, often adding conditionals while giving the appearance of being helpful can also be a hindrance to the large resource-sharing process. There can be a recognition in the resource sharing ender phase that the possibility exists for a request to be canceled and moved on even if it is not entirely

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correct. The nature of the system is such that there may be a faster way of getting the item by letting it move on then by making sure the item is perfectly formatted. The staff implication for resource sharing illustrate a need for accepting a greater sense of fluidity. Whether it is in how resource-sharing units accepts requests, processes them in house, or supplies them to other libraries, there needs to be an acceptance in looking for efficiency and effectiveness in the larger system rather than necessary cost cutting or turnaround times. The contention in the staff implications is that cost and turnaround times are by-products of an effective system. For example, let us say for a moment that a library may look to cut costs in shipping to save money. However, the chosen shipper on an interstate courier is constantly loosing books that then need to be replaced, or the processing time for packaging these items is far exceeded by another shipping method. While on the outset it may appear that money was saved, in actuality the cost was shifted elsewhere to replacement costs for books and for increased staff time to package, which takes away from other activities that staff can be doing. Therefore, in actuality the attempt to merely look at the cost of specific activities had a cascading effect into the larger resource-sharing system. Take another example of turnaround time. Focusing on turnaround times as well can cause ripple effects into the larger resource-sharing arena. For example, let us say that the resource-sharing unit is particularly interested in speeding up one specific section of the resource-sharing process, say, for example, the pulling. The increase in speed in that section could lead to a large number of mistakes being made in the pulling of books.This could lead to more staff time dedicated to providing the check-in or verification of pulled books. It is easy to see how focusing on staff time and individual unit costs can lead to misunderstandings of the large system of resource sharing. What is important to focus on rather than these discrete aspects is to think of them as by-products of a successful efficient system. By looking at them as by-products there will be less of a need to interfere to correct a specific flaw. Rather, what will happen is an examination of the system as a whole with an eye toward opportunities to provide efficiency and effectiveness by examining barriers to entry or choke point processes. In examining the system as a whole, the focus becomes less on solitary tinkering but more a holistic analysis. This often leads to different solutions for problems. There is also implicit in this argument the acceptance of error and risk. There will always be mistakes in a system of this type. Mistakes are literally part of the process, the key is to understand if they are outlier or systemic. Systemic mistakes need to be

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addressed but outliers can be allowed to occur. The resource-sharing staff units will have a very different look than the traditional interlibrary loan staff.This resource-sharing staff will have a certain acceptance of risk, understand the holistic nature of resource sharing taking into account areas where their actions can impact actions and processes at another university. They will be flexible and adaptable to not only adapt to patron but also adapt quickly to new types of patron expectations and desires.The increased flexibility and understanding of the large global relationships between resourcesharing units is reflected as well in the evolution of the consortial interactions.

CONSORTIAL INTERACTIONS The consortial interactions we have demonstrated in this book are twofold. The first understands the larger integrated networks that were discussed in the second chapters and the supply side consortia’s discussed in the third chapter. Both of these types of interactions though have a few consistent features that demonstrate the evolution to resource sharing. The first is a modicum of technical and automated integration. In the era of interlibrary loan, the interlibrary loan staff members had to juggle quite a few competing demands. Those demands were identifying the libraries able to lend such items, copyright concerns, accessibility, and transmission, etc. What we have seen in the movement to resources sharing models is an understanding of integrated computer networks, or networks of information. This is not to say this is unique or a novel idea. These developments of these networks closely mirror the development of the Internet in general, since after all the Internet is effectively an integrated information networking. The consortial interactions have probably been the most affected by the development of resource-sharing ideas. In the early days of interlibrary loan the consortia were developed to serve as cataloging groups, which had the by-product of also identifying the ownership of items, which made requesting easier. What we have seen in the resource-sharing consortia is a wholesale movement to integration of information. No longer is it a question of who owns what but how can it be accessed as quickly as possible. What is interesting about resource-sharing model rather than the interlibrary loan model is the progressive movement away from cataloging and more into access. No longer do libraries get together and engage in shared cataloging as they traditionally have. Many of the catalog records either are accepted from

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OCLC or are created in house. Now, my colleagues who are cataloging librarian may disagree. However, in this closing chapter the proposition exists to put forth an even more radical idea concerning the evolution of resource sharing and the integration of catalogs. The idea is more of a hypothetical or large philosophical question, does it matter if the library catalog the items consistently across libraries. This is a radical notion and one that will be illuminated further. We have seen through the middle part of this book, how resource-sharing units in their transition from dusty basement activities to the forefront of library services have become more and more integrated. Whether it is the IDS project or Relais International, libraries have integrated catalogs and shared discovery systems for some time now. The patrons themselves have come to expect a seamless interaction. Some libraries have even done away with the idea of recalling books, because the process of recall is actually more inefficient than merely getting the book from another library.We have seen a wholesale attempt to integrate the catalogs of a variety of universities into a share discovery system. The integration provides the patrons with countless opportunities for selecting the item they want. The process of resource sharing has become less about the consistent cataloging and more about connecting the user with the resource they need to satisfy their information need.The phrasing there is important for the argument that perhaps the cataloging is not as important as it may seem. If we are endeavoring to connect patrons with items they want, are we not attempting to match the impression of an informational item with the “official” record of that time? Therefore, we are in essence telling a patron what they should want rather than what they do want. For example, how often have librarians engaged in a reference interaction with a patron and they have asked vague questions like, “I am looking for that book about cats,” only to come to find out through a series of questions that they were looking for a book about sub-Saharan African hunting techniques, of all things. That is the key aspect of the reference interview: determining the true information need the patron is looking to satisfy. Now expand that argument to the interactions a patron has with integrated library discovery systems, or Google itself. In these moments, the patron is working to determine what exactly they are looking for. They are effectively engaged in information-seeking behavior. Now the contention here is not to judge the role or importance of the librarian in this process. The contention here is that if the patron finds what they are looking for, is it necessary in the era of shared discovery systems that all items be cataloged

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the same or even described the same? This is a bit of a subtle distinction. I am not contending that the item needs not be cataloged in general or that there is not a need for cataloging to describe the item correctly. The contention here is unlike in the past where shared cataloging was seeking to develop a consistent typology, there is now a need merely to demonstrate the existence of the item and the patron can determine the relevance of it or not. In the increased interconnectedness of resource sharing this is the next relationship of the consortia. The relationship becomes then about supply and less about identification. The next consortia is purely a shared discovery layer that facilitates sharing and less about catalogs or even the records themselves. This is demonstrated in part by the case studies described earlier. Those consortia are merely seeking to identify the universities that hold the item the patron is looking for. Given that much of this can be leveraged using technology, there is little need for working to develop a shared catalog but rather the need to develop a comprehensive catalog. Now, this is not an argument that libraries should eschew all forms of cataloging in favor of homegrown systems; rather, it is a recognition that the consortia of the resource-sharing era is more focused on supply and less on ingestion. This is a fundamental shift from the development of interlibrary loan as a byproduct of shared cataloging woes to resource sharing taking center stage as the need for shared cataloging diminishes. The consortium of the future will facilitate discovery and expedite supply for the item. By facilitating discovery, the consortia should work to integrate some version of the catalog. This would align with the patron expectations. If a patron can log into Google and get taken to a variety of information sources, they will come to the library and the resource-sharing units with similar expectations. Now, the contention here is not to supply a Google-like experience, because that is impossible for libraries. The focus should be on integrating as many of the consortial or supply-type consortia into the resource-sharing experience as possible so that the patron can seamlessly make a request for an item at the moment of discovery. Resource-sharing units must also endeavor to remove the obstacles that pertain to where the item is located. True, it is important to set expectations for delivery, but there is little need to identify an item from within the library to being outside the library aside from delivery expectations. This need coincides with the importance of staff ability. Resource-sharing units needs to be able to process and send requests seamlessly and quickly. If patrons are able to access items in a shared

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discovery layer quickly and seamlessly request them, which they may be able to wait for delivery, there will be little patience in waiting for manual processing of requests. For example, a patron makes a request for an item, and the ILL staff looks at it. The library has been identified as owning it and identified as having it on the shelf. The call number has been automatically placed into the record via the shared discovery layer. Is it necessary that a resourcesharing staff member make a more complete citation, or add an OCLC number? The item has been identified; there is nothing left to do other than send the request. This is what is meant by the need for not having consistent cataloging. If the items and the availability can be predetermined, there is little need to slow down the process by ensuring accurate resource-sharing request records. The argument here is for the development of a semantic web-type of resource sharing. Shared discovery via multiple linked catalogs allows the patron to seamlessly request items from any library and have those items sent out to a supplying library. The real evolution here is effectively the end of the borrowing processing section of resource sharing. This is again a radical idea. If the resource-sharing consortial units work on allowing the patron to make the discovery, request, and identification, then there will be little need for human intervention in the future. What amounts, then, is resource-sharing units that focus solely on efficient supply of items. This is a radical notion, admittedly; however, we have seen in the numerous consortia arguments that there are systems like this already functioning. If the resource-sharing consortia are able to create an innovative discovery and delivery service, then the need arises for addressing the development of new technologies that will undoubtedly arise from the questions not seen before in the new resource-sharing environment.

TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS Statistics and tracking The evolution of workflows and processes, especially concerning technological developments, often has unintended consequences. Chief among these is the raising of questions that had not been previously conceivable or even possible. If the library are able to provide a shared discovery layer that allows a patron their own identification of items, what are the implications for the borrowing processes or the identification of items compared to some objective number or record? What results from these consequences is

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again the evolution in resource sharing. That is the development of new technologies and new types of resources that had not been previously considered. One of these new technologies will be an increased integration with consortial partners in the form of statistics and tracking. If the consortia is serving as the sole processor and routes the request via the shared discovery layer, then there will be an increased need to track and report statistics of the behavior for the system as a whole.The increased integration will come with it a necessity to understand the different relationship within the consortia. The best way to track these relationships is statistical measuring of turnaround times and processing speeds.This is necessary for not only determining which members are effective and which are not, but also this data can be utilized for more advanced processes we will talk about later. From that, there will be a natural discussion about the location of the items in process. While the patrons can, as technology has developed, come to expect items quickly, there is also an understanding that with clear expectations shipping an item takes time. This is seen with Amazon and other shopping sites. While the request is made seamless through a website for near infinite items a person could want, there is an understanding with the requestor that for a physical item there is shipping involved. So going hand in hand with the increased need for statistical tracking to understand the relationship between the partners within consortia, so to will there be an increase in being able to track items in transit. Understanding the relationship of where items are in transit can help inform the systems that make the requests, thus allowing for expectations to be set at the moment of request. For example, when a person orders from Amazon there is a display of the expected ship time. Not many will complain that their item took too long if they are told upfront the time it will take for shipment. Now, that is not to say that a patron may choose another option for fulfillment if the time for shipment is long, but if they accept the shipment time and make the request if there is an explicit acceptance of the time for shipment. It is this type of tracking that patrons have come to expect from their resourcesharing experience currently. Each of these types of innovation naturally led to the most radical notion provided in this chapter so far.

THE FUTURE: ADAPTIVE RESOURCE-SHARING SYSTEMS The result of the increased stat integration is the increased capability of what the calculations that are occurring can be leveraged to do for the resourcesharing units. Examples of this have been given earlier. If we are able to

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track the transit times, then we can set expectations for the patron at the moment of request for how long an item will take to arrive at their location. Now, some libraries have hard coded this into their requesting system, but another machine learning system can provide this data in real time. If, as method in this chapter, the consortia’s are integrating their statistics more and more, then analysis can be done to determine the best shipper at the point of supply. The library could be using the data generated to determine whether it is better to ship an item via an interstate courier or expedited shipper. If the timeframe for shipping has been set then there is flexibility in how a library can choose the supply an item. This created the byproduct of having an adaptable shipping cost, determining shipper at the moment of supply. The type of shipper could also be determined thus saving the resource-sharing unit a lot of money by using the computing power of the integrated statistics to determine the most cost-effective shipment type while balancing the expectations set with the patron. Going even further, what if the patron at the point of request could select their desired shipment results in much the same way you would select your shipper with Amazon currently. All of these ideas are possible so we can at last ask ourselves what would the future resource-sharing unit look like. The answer is alluded to in the subject heading, but it is an adaptive resource-sharing system. Here is how it would work. The patron accesses a shared discovery system that is linked to the availability catalogs at the universities who are members of a consortium or better yet all the universities in the world.The patron works through their information seeking to determine the item they are looking.The items are inclusive of a variety of resources types.They could be anything from eBooks, traditional books, electronic journal articles, and even, as discussed in this chapter, three-dimensional objects.The patron places a request for the item and they are taken to a completion screen. A purchasing cart so to speak. The patron then chooses if their requests are completed or they wish to continue searching. At no point in time has the patron been made aware of where these items are. In many ways, at this point it does not matter. What matters is the time it takes to get the item to them. Once the patron finishes their searching they are taken to an order completion screen. Here is where the expectations are set in terms of shipping. For items that are identified as belonging to their home library the delivery time could be calculated to be zero, or instructions for pick up at the local library are provided. Once the patron completes their order, the requests are routed automatically for retrieval at their subsequent owning libraries. The item is populated with local call numbers and has been checked for availability. The item is

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queued for retrieval by lending staff and the item is retrieved.At the moment of print, the method of delivery is indicated. For items that can be scanned, they are scanned for items that are shipped. Since the patron indicated ahead of time the method of shipment, they desired the preferred shipment method is displayed. Now many would argue that it is dangerous to give patrons this level of control over the shipment type, but the cost for such a process could be set up in advance with the member libraries to allow for charge backs, etc.The item is retrieved and packaged for shipment.The shipment tracking system can update the patron each time the package meets certain checkpoints in shipping. The patron is sent a link the moment the item leaves the library.The link shows how they can track their physical item in the path to delivery.When the item arrives it is received and set to be delivered to the patron. All of this is handled within a larger integrated network. In the early days of interlibrary loan the physical collections of each library were silos, meaning the important step for interlibrary loan was to determine what each silo owned.The development of electronic library catalogs free up the siloed collections to be electronically accessible from multiple libraries or from a larger database.The next step for resource sharing is to remove the silos for data and the requesting systems themselves. By developing large-linked data sites the resource-sharing units can becomes a more web-based integrated process rather than different technologically linked interlibrary loan units, the argument here is technologically linked resource-sharing units that share a combined processing system. This is a grand argument, but there are elements and piece of this process at all places in the current resource-sharing landscape. By unsealing the individual resource-sharing units technological process and combining them into a larger holistic resource arching world, the potential for leveraging new and developing technologies in the arena of machine learning and predictive analytics becomes immeasurable. Imagine the future of resource sharing, which is less the sharing of disparate resources between libraries but more of a globally floating library collection. Using predictive analytics and machine learning and combining that with a largescale integrated resource-sharing platform, learning computers could monitor and track all requests. From these profiles, each library can be built.Think for a moment what the basic function of resources sharing has been all this time, it is to get the patrons the items they want that their individual library cannot supply. Essentially, what we are talking about is a gap in the collection at their home library. This can be addressed in a more radical way, though, in thinking about the future of resource sharing. If we are able to monitor the

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collection on a consortial or global level then the machine could analyze all transactions as they occur. They could mathematically model the gaps in a collection and determine where items need to be moved from one library to the next to meet identified gaps in a certain collection. This is adaptive resource sharing. Using machine learning to identify gaps in a collection and move the items ahead of time to meet the patron needs. Now this will not entirely eliminate the outlier request for individual items but can alleviate some of the requests that are the bulk of collection based. The adaptive resource-sharing unit will effectively be a floating collection that floats between all libraries within a given consortia.

INDEX Note: ‘Page numbers followed by “f ” indicate figures.’

A Annual Performance Evaluation, 22 Article Gateway system, 49–50 Article License Information Availability Service (ALIAS), 46 Automated Library Information Exchange Network (ALIEN), 113–116 analysis, 113–115 conception, 113 evolution, 115–116

B Bootstrap, 38 Borrow Direct, 67, 75 distributing bookbands, 71 not requestable item, 69, 69f requestable item, 68, 69f requesting library staff, 73–74, 74f returning loaned items, 74–75, 75f routing list, 70–71 supplying library staff, 71–73 for user, 67–70, 67f user local library, 68, 68f Business process engineering, 7, 11–12

C Canterbury Tertiary Alliance (CTA), 55 Cascading style sheets (CSS), 38 Change management, 20–21 Comprehensive/reflective method, 23 Consortial resource sharing alternate models discovery web services, 76 future, 77 ILLiad system, 76 basic functions, 57 Borrow Direct, 67, 75 buyer club, 63 cataloging and communications, 63 collective bargaining consortia, 64 Integrated Library System (ILS), 59–60

Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), 58 Relais D2D, 65–77, 66f supply-side consortia, 64–65 Virtual Library of Virginia (VIVA) consortia, 62–63 Council of Logistics Management, 4

D DD. See Document delivery (DD) Document delivery (DD), 77–78 Downstream facilities, 4–5

E eBooks, 98–104

F Functional paradigms, 6, 9

H Hamburger, 38 Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), 38

I Information and Access Services Department (IAS), 29 Information Delivery Services (IDS) Article Gateway system, 49–50 Article License Information Availability Service (ALIAS), 46 case studies, 45–51 IDS Logic, 48 Lending Availability Service, 49 OCLC, 46 Online Learning Institute (OLI), 47–48 Regional User Group (RUG), 47 Rethinking Resource Sharing Innovation Award, 46–47 values, 51 Workflow Toolkit, 47 133

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Index

Information paradigms, 7, 11 Interlibrary loan (ILL), 1–5, 20–21 adaptive resource-sharing systems, 128–131 consortial interactions, 124–127 overview, 117–118 staff implications, 118–124 lender phase, 122–124 patron phase, 119–121 staff phase, 121–122 statistics and tracking, 127–128 technological developments, 127–128 Interloan Billing Service (IBS), 53

L Libraries Australia Document Delivery (LADD), 51 Library and Information Association of New Zealand Aotearoa (LIANZA), 53 Library technology bootstrap, 38 cascading style sheets (CSS), 38 case studies, 38–45 common controls, 39 communication, 43–44 community-minded institutions, 42–43 dedicated developers, 41 development team, 40–41 3D printing, 40 hamburger, 38 Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), 38 other trends, 39–40 overview, 37–38 project planning, 42–43 projects prioritizing, 44–45 relational database servers, 39 responsive design, 38 source control, 42 web services, 39 Logistics paradigms, 6–7, 10

M Millenium Library Management System, 55

N National Union Catalogue (NUC), 51 Network inter-library document exchange (NILDE)

academic libraries, 80 Archivio Licenze Periodici ElettroniciE-Journals Licenses Archive, 83–84 copyright, 81–84 description, 86–88 Digital Hard Copy, 85 document delivery, 82 document delivery (DD), 77–78 first prototype, 78 guiding principles, 79–80 history, 77–80 ILL Customer charter, 77–78 interlibrary cooperation, 78 Internet Document Delivery, 78 Italy, 80 licensing restrictions, 83 members, 80 requests process, 86 rules and regulation, 82 SEDD, 85 service fee, 81 technologies, 84–86 time of delivery, 86 websites, 88 New Zealand Bibliographic Network (NZBN), 51 NILDE. See Network inter-library document exchange (NILDE)

O Online-Based Interlibrary Loan Statistical Kit (OBILLSK), 110–113 Online Learning Institute (OLI), 47–48

P Paradigms, 6–9 business process engineering, 7, 1 1–12 functional, 6, 9 information, 7, 11 logistics, 6–7, 10 outbound downstream side, 6–7 procurement, 6, 9–10 strategic paradigm, 7–8, 12–13 Procurement paradigms, 6, 9–10 Professional Development Plan (PDP), 21–23

Index

R RapidILL (Rapid) case studies, 88–93 Colorado State University’s (CSU), 88–89 e-holdings, 90 Interlibrary Loan System, 89 MARC, 89 membership cost, 90 Open Access/Freely Available database, 92 optional modules, 91–92 time-saving features, 90 workflow, 92 Regional User Group (RUG), 47 Resource sharing Automated Library Information Exchange Network (ALIEN), 113–116 analysis, 113–115 conception, 113 evolution, 115–116 bootstrap, 112 eBooks, 98–104 contractual allowances, 99 rule of five, 99–100 vendors, 99–100 generations, 108 ILLiad Resource Sharing Management software (ILLiad), 111 Internet Information Services (IIS), 112–113 JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), 112 jQuery, 112 machine learning, 107–108 Online-Based Interlibrary Loan Statistical Kit (OBILLSK), 110–113 overview, 97–98 predictive analytics, 107–110 three dimensional (3D) objects, 103–104 tracking, 104–107 external tracking, 106–107 internal tracking, 105–106 interrelational tracking, 105–106 user interface (UI), 112 Responsive design, 38

S Source control, 42 Strategic paradigm, 7–8, 12–13

135

Supply-chain management Annual Performance Evaluation, 22 change management, 20–21 comprehensive and reflective method, 23 delivery location and processes, 5 downstream facilities, 4–5 interlibrary loan, 1–5, 20–21 logisticians, 2 logistics, 4 management, 3 data processing, 3–4 feedback control, 3–4 simulation, 3–4 strategic thinking, 3–4 task, 3 networked information, 8 OCLC, 8 paradigms, 6–9 business process engineering, 7, 11–12 functional, 6, 9 information, 7, 11 logistics, 6–7, 10 outbound downstream side, 6–7 procurement, 6, 9–10 strategic paradigm, 7–8, 12–13 performance evaluation, 22–23 performance evaluations, 21–22 Professional Development Plan (PDP), 21–23 areas of opportunity, 27–28 areas of strength, 27–28 case studies, 23–28 training and suggestions, 27–28 profit business model, 2 resource-sharing, 13–20 operations, 8–20 rotation background, 29–30 duty roster, 31f implementation, 32–33 Information and Access Services Department (IAS), 29 line backup schedule, 31–32, 32f line work, 29 outcomes, 33–34 overview, 28–29 plan, 30–32 sample schedule, 32f

136

Index

T Three dimensional (3D) objects, 103–104 Tracking, 104–107 external tracking, 106–107 internal tracking, 105–106 interrelational tracking, 105–106 Trans-Tasman Interlending case studies, 51–55 interloans charging, 54 Libraries Australia Document Delivery (LADD), 51 National Union Catalogue (NUC), 51 New Zealand Bibliographic Network (NZBN), 51 OCLC, 53 trends and developments, 54–55 Virtual Document eXchange (VDX), 51

New Zealand, 53–54 OCLC, 53 VDX Users Group in Australia and New Zealand (VUGANZ), 52 ZPortal interface, 53–54

U University Libraries of Australia and New Zealand (ULANZ), 55

V VDX Users Group in Australia and New Zealand (VUGANZ), 52

W Web services, 39 Workflow Toolkit, 47