ILL Workflow

ILL staff can expect to see several changes in ILLiad once GIST is implemented. These changes can benefit ILL in a few important ways.

GIST enables ILL staff to more easily determine when purchasing books is cheaper than borrowing them by comparing the Amazon.com price to lender charges. If purchasing is done by Acquisitions, ILL staff can leave a note in such requests and route them to the Awaiting Acquisitions Processing queue in Document Delivery, Acquisitions staff can purchase the book, quickly catalog it, and place it on the hold shelf for the user. It can then be checked out in your ILS.

This is especially beneficial for ILL departments that are currently unable to purchase materials, or for departments that wish to streamline such a service. For ILL departments with purchase on demand, this enhances their program by identifying options to compare the cost to buy with the cost to borrow.

GIST uses the WorldCat API to determine whether or not you own a requested item. If so, GIST puts “Locally Held” into the WantedBy field and a routing rule moves the request to the Awaiting Library Local Processing custom queue. This tells your ILL staff to verify your holdings in the Z39.50 menu, and then cancel or fill the request accordingly.

Because GIST allows users to mark requests for purchase consideration, some ILL requests may now be diverted to Acquisitions for processing. This shared workload with Acquisitions can reduce the number of requests that ILL staff will need to process on a daily basis. More importantly, users' request workload is also reduced by integrating their request form and workflow.

One of the best features of GIST is that it indicates whether Google Books or the Internet Archive has the item available in full text. A routing rule will place such requests in a special queue, and an email routing easily delivers a URL to the user allowing them to access their material on the Web.

GIST gathers user feedback at the point of request and imports the data into ILLiad using repurposed fields. For ILL staff, this will allow you to easily determine how important an item is to a user and whether or not the user will accept an alternate format of the requested item. The former will help you determine whether or not you should exceed your max cost to get the item. The latter will help you decide whether or not you can get a microform or electronic copy of a resource for the user, eliminating the need to wait for correspondence.

ILLiad 8 allows users to customize the client interface, and GIST takes full advantage of this capability. Once implemented, ILL staff will notice some changes to the typical ILLiad layout.

The most profound changes are in the Borrowing and Document Delivery request layouts.

	In the General Request Information fields, the Wanted By field has been repurposed. It is now labeled Online Full Text and will contain the Google Books' (GOOGL) and/or Internet Archive's (INARC) OCLC symbols if full text is available.
	The GIST User Feedback fields are the former Citation fields (Cited Title, Cited Date, Cited Pages, and CitedV olume). The Cited In field is unchanged, however; but the Reference Number field has been repurposed for the Alternate Format? field. Note: The Delivery field is only for Acquisitions purposes–it does not supersede the user's ILLiad delivery preferences. Look to these fields to evaluate the importance of an item, whether an alternate format is acceptable, and see if the Amazon.com price is lower than any borrowing fees.
	The biggest change to the Item Information fields is that the Call Number and Location fields now serve a dual purpose. GIST can determine how many coordinated collection development partners own an item, as well as the number of libraries in your resource sharing consortium own an item. These totals are placed in the Call Number and Location fields, which have been relabeled accordingly. During request processing, you can overwrite those numbers as needed.

Within the GIST workflow, Acquisitions works from within Document Delivery. You will notice that there are several custom queues that are grouped within the Acquisitions category. You can collapse this category so that you only see the document delivery requests you need to work on.

When GIST is implemented, ILL staff may be affected by certain features in their day-to-day workflow.

If the Locally Held/Online Full Text (WantedBy) field contains either the GOOGL or INARC symbols and the user has indicated that alternate formats are okay (ReferenceNumber), it will be routed to this queue. For requests in this queue, search Google Books or the Internet Archive accordingly for the item. Once you've found it, click on the Send Email button and select Google Books or Internet Archive.

In the body of the email, copy and paste the URL of the resource and click Send. Note that this email is copied to your cataloging librarian for addition to the catalog.

If the Locally Held/Online Full Text (WantedBy) field contains “Locally Held”, it will be routed to this queue. For requests in this queue, double check the item's availability with the Z39.50 search. If owned, click the Copy Bib Info button, save the request, and cancel it using the Available at Your Library custom cancellation reason from the Workflow Toolkit.

If you don't have the item available, then borrow the item as normal.

With Acquisitions and ILL staff sharing ILLiad, it becomes easy for them to route requests back and forth. Acquisitions staff may route purchase requests to ILL if they have not been approved, and ILL may route borrowing requests to Acquisitions if it's cheaper to buy than borrow the items. By placing notes in these requests, Acquisitions and ILL staff can easily communicate about why each request is being routed. This allows Acquisitions and ILL staff to efficiently cooperate to improve their users' access to information.

At any time during request processing, ILL staff can simply route a request to Acquisitions staff by clicking on the Route to Document Delivery button and selecting the Awaiting Acquisitions Processing queue.

The GIST User Feedback fields contain information that is important for ILL staff.

• Cited In: retains the same data as before, indicating where the item was cited.
• Purchase?: indicates whether or not the user wants your library to consider the item for purchase.
• Importance: indicates how important the requested item is to the user’s research or teaching. This can help inform ILL staff whether or not an item is worth exceeding your Max Cost to borrow.
• Delivery: this indicates the delivery preference for the item (note: this is intended for Acquisitions staff and does not supersede the user’s account preferences).
• Alternate Format?: indicates whether or not the user will accept the item in an alternate format (such as an ebook).
• Amazon Price: provides the price of the item on Amazon.com and the lowest affiliated vendor price (if available).