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Unmediated is the message: consortially-facilitated,
user-centered approaches to enhancing interlibrary loans: one academic
library's experience
Ophelia Cheung and
Susan Patrick
Abstract | Paper in
Portable Document Format (PDF) Presentation in Microsoft® PowerPoint®
format
IFLA
Conference Questionnaire for ZPortal/VDX Users
Ryerson University Library has
benefited considerably from resource-sharing endeavors through the Ontario
Council of University Libraries, a consortium of 19 libraries in the Province
of Ontario (OCUL). A recent large-scale initiative is the implementation of the
ILL management system VDX (Virtual Document eXchange). Users have the
convenience of: searching a virtual union catalogue of Ontario university
libraries and selected world catalogues at http://racer.scholarsportal.info,
using Z39.50 search protocol; selecting search results which can auto populate
into ILL request forms; and checking their requests' status. (Also, under the
Canadian Universities Reciprocal Borrowing Agreement, users with a library card
from most universities in Canada may borrow books directly from most other
university libraries.)
Another consortial digital
initiative, NetLibrary Ebooks, provides user-centred, unmediated access to
shared monographs. In a collaborative OCUL purchase, approximately 2000
NetLibrary ebooks, plus an additional 3,000 titles shared with the Consortium
of Ontario Libraries (COOL), which also includes the public, school and college
library systems), fully integrated into our OPAC, are available remotely via
the Web.
Another project, Ryerson's
fully-subsidized document delivery service (benefiting from OCUL discount rates
for Ariel delivery), allows users to order journal articles directly from the
Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (CISTISource)
database, which is linked to the Ryerson Library catalogue, preventing users
from requesting our own holdings and connecting them directly to our full-text
resources.
User surveys and statistics for
these projects are monitored by Borrower Services, a user-centred
administrative unit, combining interlibrary loan and other services to promote
access and user satisfaction. |