Presentation for panel session on ILL and special collections at the Northwest Archives Western Roundup Conference in Seattle, WA, 30 April 2010. (http://northwestarchivistsinc.wildapricot.org/WesternRoundup2010)
Enhancing Access to Special Collections through Interlibrary Loan
1. Enhancing Access to Archives and Special Collections through Inter-Library Loan Western Roundup 2010 Christian Dupont Atlas Systems, Inc.
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9. Typical ILL workflow * With unmediated borrowing (e.g., Rapid), user requests are routed automatically to the potential lender. User WorldCat User’s ILL Account ILL Borrowing* ILL Lending User Select Lender* Ship/Scan ILL Borrowing*
10. ILL with special collections User WorldCat User’s ILL Account ILL Borrowing* ILL Lending User Select Lender* Special Collections ILL Borrowing Ship/Scan/Refuse Special Collections
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Editor's Notes
http://northwestarchivistsinc.wildapricot.org/WesternRoundup2010 WESTERN ROUNDUP A Joint Conference of the Conference of Inter-Mountain Archivists, Northwest Archivists, Society of California Archivists, and Society of Rocky Mountain Archivists. SEATTLE April 28-May 1, 2010 Friday, April 30 - Late Afternoon sessions 3:30-5:00 * Session 13: Enhancing Access to Archives and Special Collections through Inter-Library Loan Elizabeth Nielsen, Chair and participant, Oregon State University Christian Dupont, Atlas Systems, Inc. Geoff Wexler, Oregon Historical Society Researchers are learning more about archival and special collections materials through online finding aids, consortial databases, and WorldCat—but often the materials themselves are not available online and are housed at repositories some distance away. OCLC Research launched a “Sharing Special Collections Project” in 2009 to explore streamlining procedures and developing good practices for lending archives and special collections materials. In addition, an Association of College and Research Libraries/ Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (ACRL/RBMS) task force has been charged with reviewing, updating, and merging the ACRL guidelines for interlibrary loan of rare and unique materials and lending of special collections materials for exhibition. This panel discussion will allow for sharing of ideas, concerns, and questions among panelists and session attendees about the general concepts as well as detailed practices for loaning archives and special collections. It will also include time for discussion of possible next steps to enable or facilitate loaning of special collections and archival materials in the western states.
Instead of viewing of preservation and access as competing interests when it comes to special collections and archives, we must learn to balance them. Not a new concept, but this type of reasoning is not generally applied to interlibrary loan and special collections, where the prevailing instinct is to “just say no.” Likewise, we must learning to view risk not in opposition to trust, but instead within the context of relationships that involve trust. Need to build trust, and building trust necessarily involves risk.
Need to examine and evaluate risks, then analyze and reduce them.
Most of my remarks will pertain most immediately to academic libraries with special collections and archives units as well as interlibrary loan units that are part of the larger library structure. But they will also be applicable to non-academic and independent archives and historical societies that engage in lending and borrowing with academic institutions that have ILL units. Some principles also applicable to any type of inter-institutional lending and borrowing for research use (i.e., research loans). Building trust begins at home. Need first of all to trust colleagues at our own institutions – our friends and family. Too often, special collections look askance at resource sharing librarians, not trusting them to process requests or handle rare and unique materials. Special collections librarians also have trouble trusting their counterparts at neighboring institutions. Not sure whether their materials will be safely handled in their neighbor’s reading room. Special collections librarians likewise have trouble trusting strangers, like shipping services.
Inter-institutional lending – or “resource sharing” more broadly (for it can involve scan-on-demand services as well as physical loans) – can take place in variety of relationships, from bilateral peer-to-peer agreements, to “closed-loop” consortial arrangements (e.g., the Wisconsin Area Research Centers that Geoff described), all the way up to “open-loop” global networks with thousands of a diverse participants (e.g., WorldCat Resource Sharing network, comprising more than 9,100 OCLC member institutions).
In the next few minutes, I will summarize two current initiatives focused on enhancing access to special collections and archives through inter-institutional lending and other resource-sharing practices.
RLG Shared Resources Manual, 3rd ed. (Stanford:Research LibrariesCroup, 1987), “Additional Guidelines for Access to Archives, Manuscripts, and Special Collections” 8.1 INTRODUCTION These additional guidelines are intended to facilitate and standardize interlibrary loan of research materials housed in the special collections departments of member institutions. They are designed to: 1. reflect the common commitment of member libraries to meet research needs as stated in the RLG Shared Resources Manual; adapt the interlibrary loan protocols set forth in Chapters 6 and 7 to the particular conditions that distinguish special collections materials from those in general collections; be sufficiently flexible to accommodate intra-institutional interlibrarv loan regulations. These guidelines are not intended to cover the loan of materials for exhibit purposes, Both this manual and the National Interlibrarv Loan Code (1980) state that some special collections materials are inappropriate for interlibrary loan because of rarity, monetary value, uniqueness, or fragility. However, other materials in special collections are not rare, expensive, unique, or fragile. Consequently, these guidelines recommend that special collections departments in all RLG libraries treat interlibrary loan requests case by case and that, in the spirit of the RLG compact, they interpret their lending policies as generously as possible. http://www.oclc.org/research/activities/sharing/default.htm Background Sharing the rare and unique items in library collections has long been a controversial topic. In 2002, RLG organized a forum in Washington, D.C., called Sharing the Wealth that brought together teams of special collections curators and interlibrary lending staff to discuss how best to share special collections and archival material more widely. The focus was on lending original materials, but scan-on-demand initiatives and other provision of surrogates was also explored. This event spawned a working group that surveyed research libraries on current attitudes and practices, gathered superior examples of procedures and forms used in the lending of special collections, and developed a model policy for lending the rare and unique. In the end, the working group concluded that opinions about lending special collections was divided into two camps: those who already loaned such materials successfully, and those who were unwilling to even discuss the possibility of lending their rare and unique items. In 2009, an RLG Programs steering committee on the delivery of special collections was formed. This group revisited the idea of physically lending rare and unique materials and initially concluded that the topic was still too controversial for reasoned discussion. However, group members reconsidered and decided that, given the many changes in the economic, technical and cultural environments since 2002, it was worth having such discussions again, in spite of the fact that the topic makes many in libraries, archives and museums distinctly uncomfortable. At the same time, a working group on sharing expertise among RLG Programs partner institutions within the SHARES resource sharing consortium proposed streamlining the process for handling external requests for special collections materials, as the volume of such requests is dramatically on the rise. The impulses of the steering committee and the working group were joined together, resulting in the creation of the Sharing Special Collections Advisory Group. The Sharing Special Collections Advisory Group is made up of special collections specialists and interlibrary lending staff, in several cases teams from the same institution. Two main tasks have been identified during preliminary discussions: streamlining work flows when handling ILL requests for rare and unique materials, and exploring how best to go about building trust between two institutions sufficient to allow the physical lending of special collections materials. The conversation about sharing special collections began with a Web seminar, "Treasures on Trucks and Others Taboos," on 28 May, 2009. The seminar featured a panel discussion with two pairs of SHARES experts and heads of special collection, one pair speaking from experience and the other just starting to consider the possibility of more widely sharing the physical items. Our work will complement the work of Jennifer Schaffner’s "policy and workflow on copying special collections materials" and the RBMS task force on revising the lending of special collections guidelines. III. Getting down to brass tacks: who's doing what, when? A. Create a glossary of terms about sharing special collections, so we know we're all talking about the same thing. Volunteers: Laura Carroll, Elizabeth Nielsen. B. Streamline work flows for handling outside requests for special collections materials. Right now these are usually treated as one-offs with a lot of special handling and conferring. Some working group members feel like we might be able to tease apart 1) the borrowing actions, 2) lending actions when the requests are fielded by ILL, and 3)lending actions when the requests are fielded by special collections. Another opinion within the group is that we need to look at the process as a whole and recommend one set of best practices. Volunteers: Scott Britton (overall), Aimee Lind (overall), Jennifer Block (borrowing), Barbara Coopey (lending). C. Explore what sort of trust needs to be in place for one institution to lend a special collections item to another, and how to go about building and documenting that trust. Volunteers: Jen Schaffner. D. When we're further along with the these, the group will also formulate a compelling argument for whoever needs to hear it (administrators, curators, donors, funders) that sharing special collections is both possible (in this tough economic climate) and beneficial (to lenders as well as borrowers). IV. Next steps: schedule calls for each of the first three tasks V. Other business: Our discussions touched upon a number of other topics: the desirability of collecting examples of current work flows, the fact that lending special collections materials may require a different pricing structure than traditional ILL; how most of our discussions so far have tended to be about published materials versus archival materials; that loaned special collections materials must be identified on the *outside* of packaging; that a long term goal would be to have smart ILL discovery systems that when appropriate know to suppress records for items that cannot be loaned or shared; and that one useful aspect of making a compelling argument for sharing special collections might be to write up a detailed assessment of where we are now. Sharing Special Collections Advisory Group Jennifer Block (Princeton) Scott Britton (University of Miami) Eleanor Brown (Cornell) Laura Carroll (Emory) Paul Constantine (University of Washington) Barbara Coopey (Pennsylvania State) Margaret Ellingson (Emory) Cristina Favretto (University of Miami) Sue Hallgren (University of Minnesota) Aimee Lind (Getty Research Institute) Elizabeth Nielsen (Oregon State) Sandra Stelts (Pennsylvania State) Shannon Supple (UC Berkeley Law)
In 1988, Rare Books & Manuscripts Librarianship (vol. 3, no. 2) published three papers exploring interlibrary loan and special collections with an introduction by editor Sid Huttner. The papers were presented at the 29th RBMS Preconference in New Orleans on July 7, 1988. The issue also published as an appendix RLG's "Additional Guidelines for Access to Archives, Manuscripts, and Special Collections." http://rbms.info/publications/rbml/tables_of_contents.shtml Volume 3, Number 2 Fall 1988 Editor: Alice D. Schreyer SIDNEY F. HUTTNER, ed. Generous but Responsible: The Unique, the Rare and Interlibrary Loan 103 THOMAS V. LANGE Alternatives to Interlibrary Loan 107 H. THOMAS HICKERSON & ANNE R. KENNEY Expanding Access: Loan of Original Materials in Special Collections 113 JAMES WOOLLEY Special Collections Lending: A Reader's View 121 http://rbms.info/standards/index.shtml ACRL Guidelines for the Interlibrary Loan of Rare and Unique Materials. Final version, approved by ACRL at ALA Annual Meeting, Orlando, 2004; published in C&RL News 65:9, October 2004, pp. 544-547. Former draft version published in C&RL News 54:5, May 1993; Approved February 1994; draft revision published in C&RL News 65:5, May 2004. http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/about/committees/roster.cfm?committee=acr-rbmguide 2009 appointment of Guidelines for Interlibrary Loan and Borrowing and Lending Special Collections Material for Exhibition Task Force. Committee Charge To review, update, and revise the 2004 revised Guidelines for the Interlibrary Loan of Rare and Unique Material; and to review, update, and revise the 2005 revised Guidelines for Borrowing and Lending Special Collections Material for Exhibition, combining these two documents into a single set of guidelines for borrowing and lending rare and unique materials and special collections material. Roster Hjordis D. Halvorson (Chair, 2009 - 2011) Dr. Christian Yves Dupont (Member, 2009 - 2011) Jeffrey D. Marshall (Member, 2009 - 2010) Laila Miletic-Vejzovic (Member, 2009 - 2011) Heather M. Smedberg (Member, 2009 - 2011) Shannon K. Supple (Member, 2009 - 2011) Cherry Williams (Member, 2009 - 2011) ACRL Guidelines for Borrowing and Lending Special Collections Materials for Exhibition. Approved January 2005.
https://prometheus.atlas-sys.com/display/illiad8/Rapid+Manager+Processing Overview of Rapid Manager Processing If your institution is a member of the Rapid resource sharing service, you can use ILLiad 8 to minimize the work and processing time of your Borrowing and Lending requests. ILLiad 8 uses the ILLiad Rapid Manager to communicate directly with Rapid to locate lenders and fill requests automatically. You can configure your process to move requests through queues manually or create custom routing rules for a more unmediated workflow. If both the Borrowing and Lending institutions use ILLiad Odyssey, requests are handled automatically through Odyssey, and can be delivered to customers with no staff intervention. To use ILLiad with Rapid, simply configure the Rapid Manager as explained in Configuring the Rapid Manager. The Rapid Manager is a separate service installed on your ILLiad server, designed to download and process your Rapid requests every 10 minutes. When sending requests, Rapid automatically chooses the Lender based on Rapid load balancing protocol. Lenders using Rapid and the Rapid Manager service in ILLiad, then receive the request and fill or cancel the request through ILLiad, and the Rapid Manager automatically updates that request with Rapid. Odyssey requests can be filled by the lender as well using the information received with the Rapid request.
Adding special collections to the ILL process involves cooperation from the special collections units at both the lending and borrowing institution. Lenders need to determine conditions of loan; borrowers need to abide by them, including providing secure, supervised reading room.
Regarding #1, see Report of the WorldCat Local Special Collections and Archives Task Force, 16 December 2008 http://www.rbms.info/committees/bibliographic_standards/committee-docs/FinalReportWCLSpecCollTaskForce.pdf and: OCLC Response to the WorldCat Local Special Collections and Archives Task Force, Mela Kircher, April 3, 2009, Revised http://www.rbms.info/committees/bibliographic_standards/committee-docs/OCLCResponseWCLTaskForce.pdf Regarding #2, see: ILLiad, the OCLC Policies Directory, and WorldCat Registry, Tim Prather, Amigos (presented at 2010 ILLiad International Conference) https://www.atlas-sys.com/conference/2010Presentations%5CILLiad_the_OCLC_Policies_Directory_and_WorldCat_Registry.pdf The OCLC Policies Directory contains ILL policy information for over 7,000 WorldCat Resource Sharing libraries. ILLiad provides one-click access to the Policies Directory, where you can review these lending and copying policies. You can use this information to choose your potential lenders, to update information about lenders in your ILLiad database and to publish your own policies. With the introduction of the new Policies interface in December 2009, the Policies Directory is now linked to the WorldCat Registry, a Web-based directory that defines institutional identity, services, relationships, contacts and other key data often shared with third parties. Attend this session to learn about updating your library’s data in the Policies Directory and WorldCat Registry and how it can be used to improve your lending and borrowing fill-rates in ILLiad. Regarding #3, refer to posting from OCLC/RLG SHARES manager Dennis Massie to the RLG-SHARES-L mailing list on 4/1/2010: Dear SHARES Participants, Please read at least down to the arrows for an important tidbit about lender-borrower communication difficulties. Periodically I’m asked to remind folks that it’s essential for borrowing libraries to honor any handling or packaging request made by a lending library. If a lender asks you to return their item in a box, it is incumbent upon you as the borrower to do so. The same obviously goes for requests that no photocopying be allowed, or no adhesive labels be placed directly on the book, or that the item be used only within the library, or even used only under supervision in a reading room. What the lending library says goes. Lately, a new (for me, anyway) wrinkle has emerged. In the most recent example of which I’m aware, a museum library loaned a book to an academic library and asked that the item be returned in a box. The item was returned in a jiffy bag. After some back and forth, it was discovered that the text placed in the Lending Notes field by the lending library, which uses WorldCat Resource Sharing, was not being displayed for the borrowing staff at the academic library, which uses ILLiad. That’s right: ILLiad apparently doesn’t display notes from WCRS partners. The “return in a box” message wasn’t being seen by the borrowing library staff. This may explain a fair number of incidents like this. I’ve communicated with OCLC support staff and product managers about this, and they passed the word on to Atlas folks. So it is now officially a “known problem” and will go onto the enhancements list. In the meantime, users need to be aware of this glitch and behave accordingly. Lenders, always include something in any paperwork or on any book band or label traveling with the book that explains handling and packaging requirements. Borrowers, follow all handling and packaging instructions from lenders. “I can’t control what my mailroom does” is not an acceptable response. A special work flow needs to be in place to ensure that the lender’s instructions are followed to the letter. Otherwise lenders are fully within their rights to refuse to lend to those who repeatedly fail to honor such instructions. OK? Fair enough? Having written all that, I’m sure that 99.9999% of all SHARES transactions (and of all ILL transactions, for that matter) get resolved to everyone’s satisfaction, incident-free. We’re all doing our best. And our best is usually pretty darned good. So be aware of this glitch in the communication chain. And take the necessary steps as both borrower and lender to keep everything on a trusted, friendly basis.
Embracing ILL for special collections and archives requires change …
Message from Denise A. Forro, Chair 2009-2010 of RUSA STARS (Sharing and Transforming Access to Resources Section) and Head InterLibrary Services, Michigan State University Libraries, posted stars-l list on Friday afternoon, April 16, 2010: RUSA President Susan Beck created an "initiative to encourage each subject related RUSA committee to develop a web page that will provide basic information for new librarians relating to the concerns of the committee and the webpage would be called: Five things a new librarian should know about ... This is meant to be an evolutionary process." To start the process, I am asking all STARS members to think about what a new interlibrary loan/resource sharing librarian should know in general and submit that information to this list or to ALA Connect. Once we have tabulated the results and determined a set number of things that new librarians should know, then I will post a poll for everyone to vote on the five most important ones. Within 15 minutes, Kathryn Leigh, Head, Access Services at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, posted these six points, adding that she “could go on and on.” I read Kathryn’s message after finishing my outline for this presentation. I found her “manifesto” very inspiring, and hope you do, too.
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