Interlibrary Loan Service Integration: fit for the future

This post is a response to Daniel Payne’s article, “The something service: on calling interlibrary loans interlibrary loans” which is well worth reading. 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/certified_su/

I would say that what @lyhairian does in his final remarks is actually nail down the real issue - we have allowed this service (whatever you call it) to become its own entity that we think needs presence and external promotion. It doesn't, and UK ILL shouldn't be the uncultured monster it has become. In part I might put this down to software that has enabled it to be isolationist within the library ecosystem.

Primarily it should just be an internal support mechanism for some of the core activities of libraries, namely: supporting research; developing collections; delivering content. To contextualize that: Research Support; Collection Development; Procurement & Access. 

• Research support teams are the experts at liaising and guiding people to resources and services available to support their research.
• Procurement and access teams are the experts in acquiring content and delivering access to it to meet demand.
• Collection development teams direct the development of unique content holdings through expertly identifying and predicting future needs. They also react to previously unknown needs by responding to recommendations from staff and students.

There is a role for ILL to plug the holes in local library collections, but it should never be working in isolation from collection development and support activities themselves. No library can own everything. Equally, we are still a long way from all material of possible research value being available digitally - be that for free or by subscription. Yet Open Access (OA) marches on and we will increasingly be able to direct people to repository versions of published papers, as well as OA versions on established publisher platforms.

ILL service teams, still very much working with a mindset that deifies physical material, are a seperate cost burden that distract from greater efficiency that could be gained by integrating with these other core areas. To the customer, unfamiliar with library vernacular, the service should be little more than a boutique and bespoke solution for the vague materials that can't more easily be catered for through:  

• Better utilisation and knowledge of available and local resources 
• Intelligence driven on-demand acquisition
• Improved provision of digital access to content through whatever means available

I've written elsewhere on intelligence-driven on-demand acquisition, but from the perspective of the customer it has a significant element that we can all identify with. Through engaging with a responsively managed service we feel respected, listened to and influential. Lending a hand in developing a collection is something that the customer can derive satisfaction from, and also allows the library to more easily engage with its customer base, maintaining its relevance in an increasingly complex world. The ability to add value to a service through a responsive and engaged approach is, to me, essential to what a library offers.  

Let's make the service that shall not be named the boon of the library's core services and not a secret island of plenty for those who happen to know about it. 

But how should we express this service to our end-user? 

My answer is simple, and in the context of the above thinking - we shouldn't. The service is a request service and what we should be doing is making it as simple as possible for customers to tell us what they want. We then, within our normal core operations processes, take care of that by advising or delivering it to them. It really should be that simple. We don’t need to explain something to them in the terms of library jargon or a process; we need to provide excellence in delivering what they need.

How we would do this requires another posting. Simply put, it would involve: a decent discovery layer with quality metadata behind it; a link resolver; a single-stream access point for recommendations and requests; thought-through technical solutions; consolidation of a number of services, and a group of concerted problem solvers. Not really that much hard work to finally bring an important component of library service back into the fold and fit for the future. 

Facebook, Twitter and now TalkBin: connecting with library customers

I'm a big believer that if you work in the service industry then you should open up as many channels of communication with your customers as you possibly can. Where I work a good chunk of time is spent assisting people at service points and this is valuable face time in which we get to promote and recommend services and facilities. While I think we could always do-more-to-get-more out of these encounters it often isn't appropriate. The person generally knows what they want and due to demands on their time want it done quickly. There are excellent research and learning support services available for people who want to 'partner up' and go beyond, but these can accommodate only a certain number and are perhaps not fully or widely appreciated.

In my opinion, an area that could be invested in would be social media and an institutions online profile.
Social media and improved networks are allowing for new channels to open up very quickly and efficiently. Facebook and Twitter are a no-brainer nowadays as a way of building and promoting brands and engaging with customers. Through that engagement much can be learned to inform improvement of services and, at the same time, perceived and actual engagement with the local customer community. However, this is all done out in the open, and although that is not necessarily a bad thing, it can cause 'clutter' in feeds, particularly if the institution was intending for them to be more one way in nature or don't have the inclination or staff to cover the associated workload.

Enter TalkBin. Another recent Google acquisition that I think would be worthwhile giving a whirl to see how it increases feedback. After-all, staff can't be everywhere all the time and tools like this could really help us know where we should be, when and what extra value we can add. I've heard from colleagues at a variety of institutions that attempts to engage through questionnaires, focus groups and face-to-face sessions leads to a generally underwhelming number of responses. Why not enable mobile text feedback?

I very much think that time invested by staff in experimenting with new service delivery methods, communication channels and feedback mechanisms is a worthwhile endeavor.

Want strategic innovation? Create a safe environment in your library for people to be heretical. #carlconf2012
— Jenica Rogers (@jenica26) April 6, 2012

 Where I work there are staff with the flexibility to make the good things successful and the bad a valuable learning experience. The above Tweet is a pretty good summation of my general feeling and if such a culture and environment were further fostered, then i'd say it would be a surefire way to stay at the tip of this fast changing environment.

Of course, communications and customer service is by no means all online, but it is hard to deny how increasingly important online is becoming and how, while not getting carried away, we should be keeping an eye out for what is already going on in other sectors and then tune accordingly.

LSE Library Selection

LSE Library Selection, a gallery on Flickr.

Via Flickr:
A selection of some of the best photos on flickr by, or of, LSE Library.

Some work thing

i heart maps


View International Interlending and Document Delivery Networks in a larger map

Where does all this library stuff come from? using MARC and Google to visualise

This is what happens when you take a large and generally representative sample of MARC records from your library, match up all the publication location codes with the Library of Congress MARC standards code list, put the numbers into a Google Doc, and run the 'Heatmap' gadget.

There was a reason to me having done this, but that reason no longer remains relevant. It was hard graft crunching data, so it would be a shame for me not to explain what it is and share. If you hover over the countries the numbers that you are faced with can be taken as the number of items from that country. Don't get hung up on them though, it's a sample and they would be better if they were percentages.

And what do I think of it? Well, clearly the US, UK, France and Germany are where most of the material comes from. Considering the history and background of the library which this data was sourced from I am not overly surprised that stuff published in Russia stands up quite well. Is that Soviet Russia though?

In isolation I guess the conclusions and comparisons that can be made are limited. In lieu of other libraries doing roughly similar things I'll never know the distinctiveness or uniqueness of this collection. One thing is sure though, that this collection is truly global in its coverage.