Imagine placing a request for an book via interlibrary loan. You fit a predetermined profile for the library (for instance you are a faculty member, or a student), you are requesting a book that is not owned by the Olin Library, it is owned by a couple of libraries that lend to us for free. Having met all these criteria (automatically, no extra steps for you) your request doesn't stop at Olin waiting for our staff to review it. It goes straight to the lending library. The first we ever see of the book is when it arrives via the US Mail. The same can be done for articles. It adds speed and cuts work and all depends on setting up the custom holding paths and policies correctly.
OCLC has been doing this for sometime, but I had kinda lost touch with it. It used to cost for each request ,which is pretty unsustainable for most libraries. They have now included it as part of our regular OCLC fee. This makes it much more interesting.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment