The Odyssey of ILLiad
Back Row (from left to right): Alex Edezhath, Bernie Noll, Peter Whiteside,
Mary Van Court, Gail Dyakanoff
Front Row (from left to right): Steven Hall, Joy Araki, Chelsea Murphy
Until recently, Interlibrary Loan (ILL) and Health Sciences Library Document Services independently offered the same services to their respective clientele. Upper campus users placed requests using the Interlibrary Loan link (ILLiad is the software behind the scenes) on the Libraries Gateway while Health Sciences customers used a form on HealthLinks. If a customer used the “wrong” form, the request was cancelled and the user was referred to the other service.
On May 1, 2007, ILLiad software became “live” at HSL too. There's now a mechanism to move user requests over the electronic "fence" which divided the operations. The REQUEST ITEM button on WorldCat Local works for all UW users. Library users can put in a request from any location, from databases or from WorldCat Local, and be routed to the appropriate service relatively seamlessly.
The change had a BIG impact on staff at HSL document services who had to learn new software and change their workflows. Here’s what some of the staff who implemented the change think.
Bernie Noll says, “ILLiad is neither user friendly nor staff friendly because the learning curve is very high.”
Joy Araki states that, “Although ILLiad has been a bit intimidating to navigate and learn, I am excited at the prospects of streamlining the billing process and making my job more efficient. I have to thank the Document Services staff because they now input much of the billing data and cut the amount of my time spent on billing in half!”
“The ultimate goal of our service is to streamline the document ordering process for HSL and non-Libraries customers”, says Alex Edezhath, “and ILLiad is the first small step, but it needs improvement.”
Bernie and Alex have dealt with some customer dissatisfaction because PubMed users cannot yet automatically populate the ILL form with bibliographic information the way they can when they use WorldCat Local or other databases.
So why make the change?
This is a first step in making ILL/Document Services on campus more transparent and less confusing for our users. Implementing ILLiad paves the way for developing unified policies, procedures, and fee structure (or maybe no fees at all). Ultimately, this odyssey of ILLiad can enable the Libraries to deliver materials faster and less expensively to all library users.
Story coordinated & developed by Mary VanCourt, Health Sciences Library
If you have ideas for stories (you don’t have to write them!), please let us know at strategic@lib.washington.edu.