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7) Do you have other comments about the impact of Request on your ILL operations or unit workflow you would like to share?
It has been made it more difficult and complex, because what is
not linked has to be redone completely and a complete new
ILL request has to be handled. Also when the UC's can not
supply, the request has to basically started over again. So it
makes more work for the borrowing ILL unit.
see below
Our unit has had a decrease in borrowing
but an increase in lending - the lending
increase is probably due to load leveling. As a staff member that works
both borrowing and lending I do not see
that request has made a significant impact. It has added some steps to the
operation of the unit but they are easily absorbed into the work flow. I am wary of opening it up to undergraduates since we get so many requests that they need right away and
they tend to wait until the last minute to request them and many times they do
not even pick up the requests that do come in - it would seem to be a waste of
staff time and resources. We initially did not make patrons aware of Request but have spread the word about Request
to patrons both in the ILL office and at the reference desk. I am not sure if
Request is completely responsible for the decrease in borrowing activity - e journals probably have had more of an
impact than Request.
Can't tell, since I'm answering from a Reference point of view.
I suspect that many times people are requesting items that we really do own (as part of an unanalyzed set, a different edition, etc.) I think this is a disservice to our users since they have to wait 2-3 weeks to get something that they might get at the time they initiate a REQUEST.
Regarding the last question, I'm not sure if Request has increased or decreased the activity, but ILL activity is down. Especially in article requesting,and most probably related to ejournals.
Its a good service. The primary benefit seems to be for the patron. It has increased the number of requests we get in ILB. It has made the tracking of requests more complex, but that has just required a change in procedures and is not a negative.
It is good for patrons to be able to generate the ILL directly
from the display screen. On the other hand, the ease with
which an ILL can be generated may invite some patrons to ask
for titles even before they decide that they really want them. This
may mean an unnecessary increase in ILL work, cost, and wear
on the materials as they are shipped around the state. Another
problem is that many patrons do not use the catalogs with
particular efficiency and are known to ask for titles via ILL that
are sitting in the stacks. The new system weakens the contact
between the librarian and the reader with definite losses to
both of them.
during busy times material is coming in so fast we get behind in processing because of staffing. But it's a good thing when material is already in the office and not waiting for it.
We dn't know the answers to many of the questions (blank responses). A study would be needed to look at the data, i.e. request same materials via regular ILL and CDL Request to determine if there is any time savings to patron, or workload reduction for DDS/ILL staff.
We are seeing great increase of Borrowing but have not received funding for more staff.
ILL staff want a phone number space on the form
I would encourage more use of request if it could hook-up to Docline for
requests from medical libraries.
Routing requests to specific branch libraries has increased the work load on branch staff.
We would like to see Docline rather than OCLC as provider
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