Lock, Stock and Two Administrators
David Ong, George Panagiotidis
Abstract
The local customisation and configuration of Inter Library Loan systems hinges on the expertise and experiences that System Administrators have at their disposal. Though much of this can only be gained through time and understanding of the business requirements of an organisation, the gaining and sharing of this knowledge is often underestimated. Two of Australia’s large consortial ILL systems, the CAVAL Library Interlending Consortium (CLIC) and Libraries Australia Document Delivery (LADD), have been interoperating for over 4 years. Though geographically remote, the professional relationship between the staff of the two systems developed, and from that emerged one of the most successful offline communications and knowledge sharing strategies. A resource sharing ‘proof of concept’ pioneered between the two organisations in the ILL environment may be applied to other complex library software. The benefits are correlated to future trends in ILL and other library software, for all libraries large and small. Take a journey of discovery with two of Australia’s System Administrators as they share with you the methodology, successes and lessons they learnt through sharing with each other.
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