The purpose of this paper is to describe how RapidILL expanded its service offerings from expedited requesting and delivery of journal articles to include delivery of book…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to describe how RapidILL expanded its service offerings from expedited requesting and delivery of journal articles to include delivery of book chapters as well.
Design/methodology/approach
The author uses a case study approach to provide an overview of the RapidILL service, the service advantages inherent in its system design, and how the system was modified to accommodate requesting and delivery of book chapters.
Findings
The challenges that RapidILL member libraries anticipated did not materialize; the system set up required for requesting and supplying book chapters is largely the same as for supplying journal articles. The resulting fill rate and turnaround time for book chapters compares favorably with that of journal articles.
Originality/value
The RapidILL book chapter service has been in place for approximately a year at the time of writing. This paper introduces a fairly new service, provides data from a key participating library, and will be of interest to interlending practitioners who use or are interesting in joining RapidILL. Interlending system designers will also find the discussion of the underlying architecture useful.
Details
Keywords
In the last issue of OCLC Systems and Services we examined a feasibilitystudy being conducted by a few libraries and OCLC. This study wasdesigned to explore the possibility of…
Abstract
In the last issue of OCLC Systems and Services we examined a feasibility study being conducted by a few libraries and OCLC. This study was designed to explore the possibility of linking a library′s local ILL electronic request system to OCLC. The OCLC link eliminates the rekeying of patron requests, which reduces the ILL staff workload and speeds request inputting, both of which would be beneficial to any Interlibrary Loan department. Of the four participants in the study, one site, Southeast Florida Information Network, has entered its testing mode, and only one site, Colorado State University, has successfully implemented and is currently using this link.