The following is a summary of HLS listserv responses about ILL (interlibrary loan) processes, posted 7/8/10:
Below is the listing of responses I received to my ILL processes question. I did not post the question to MedLib L or Docline L but I may to see if I get additional information. Many thanks to everyone who responded! jlh
*Jan, this is a “me, too!” response. We don’t have this sort of shared system yet among the hospitals in our health system, but I’m sure it’s coming, and we’d rather plan to manage this proactively. I hope you can share your responses (one way or another) -
*I would be very interested in your responses as I manage a consortium of 17 hospital libraries but within the 17, there are several systems with small, smaller, and larger hospitals. At present all 3 libraries in each of two system have different e-journal collections but in those two systems, really only one library does extensive filling and requesting. The smaller libs just use what they have access to and request of the larger lib or our headquarters which then fills the request.
*At Xxxxx we have two libraries with two Docline IDs and one general library email address. These days all emails come to it from other libraries. Staff at each library have access to it and work together to keep it “cleaned out” and the articles routed on to patrons. We request articles for staff as they come to each library (also requests from patrons come to the library inbox too and my staff work it out). Luckily, I don’t have to do much with it, unless one of them is out on vacation. I feel very fortunate. All our e-journals are billed to us as system subscriptions, so there seems to be no conflict of interest is using them to fill requests. We pay through the nose and then some for these titles, institution wide…meaning all our hospitals.
*We are a 5 hospital system with a staffed library in 3 of the 5 hospitals. Two of the staffed libraries are “one person” staff. We also have separate Docline accounts so that each librarian takes care of local requests. Recently we have seen a drop in the numbers of ILLs with one hospital doing virtually none and one doing less than 20 this year. We have considered centralizing ILL activity but since ILLs have dropped significantly, it really is not a burden and, I think, the site Librarians enjoy the positive effects of delivering to their local users. We have dropped subscriptions but I do not think that is the reason we have less ILL requests from our staff. We’ve thought a lot about this and our “top ten” list includes:
UpToDate
CINAHL with Fulltext
Increased use of only the abstract
Less time for articles
Our residents have access to the Medical School collection online UpToDate again.
*We are part of a large library system, with our journal subscriptions largely electronic and joint. ILLs are done by each library separately, and we have different policies for them. If you want more information, pleas call me.
*We have 3 libraries in our system. Two that have more than 250 journal titles. And, the other library is probably smaller, but I don’t know what their collection size is. We do share online materials. We take whatever comes to us in interlibrary loan requests. Other than sharing our online collection, our libraries are very separate, and I have no idea what the other library’s stats are.This started us talking about whether our online collection is listed in Docline, and it is not. It appears that with a particular title you have to select print or online and much of our online collection is also available in our library in print.
*We’re not big lenders anymore, although we once were.
We filled just under 500 requests last year. We currently have 2 staff people. We’re adding a 3rd librarian next month.
Although the larger library has most of the print collection, the smaller library has a more unique collection – it specializes in orthopedics and has ortho titles dating back to the 1960s. The copying is more evenly distributed than you’d think but I don’t have exact numbers readily available for you.
We consolidated our three docline accounts into one about 10 years ago.
At that time, we had an ILL tech (who also was the circulation desk attendant at the largest library). I did the updating of our holdings on Docline, but the tech handled the day-to-day ILL routine. I think at the time, the idea was to move ILL onto the tech person and away from the librarians, since the smaller two libraries were both one-person libraries. Sadly, the tech position was cut shortly after we made the switch. I’ve been doing ILL ever since. We’ve always equally divided literature searches, and reference, etc, but we each then specialize in some things that are not shared – I have ILL, acquisitions, cataloging, serials and e-resource management for all sites, even though I’m based at the smallest library. The other librarian, the manager, besides the “management” stuff, is very involved in clinical librarianship, hand-held device support, and editing/manuscript preparation activities. We consolidated our 3 (now 2) libraries into 1 docline account based atthe largest library. The serial holdings for that one docline account actually include all 3 libraries; it took a certain amount of editing of the serial holdings to get everything straight.
The requests all come to one person, who passes them onto the other library as appropriate. The copies are scanned & e-mailed back to the main ILL person for her to send out in whatever format is necessary.
*I also have a share of ejournals. And in my case, whoever the request goes, then the recipient of the request fills it. If the system throws the request to my library, then I fill it even if the article comes from a shared journal.
Jan Haley, MLS
