What to expect in OCLC WorldShare™ Interlibrary Loan
WorldShare Interlibrary Loan will expand the functionality currently included in the WorldCat Resource Sharing service to deliver new features that will save time and simplify workflows for both library staff and library users. New features are enabled by the new WorldShare Platform that supports the service.
For library staff:
Staff will benefit from workflow automation that will:
- Display lending cost from the OCLC Policies Directory to speed selection of appropriate lenders
- Automatically extend the lender string as needed
- Eliminate the need for borrowing staff to manually manage 'enter my symbol twice' (EMST) lenders. Lending libraries can determine and broadcast the timeframe for responding to a request.
- Incorporate new, alternative "buy-it" options and workflows to facilitate timely purchase of needed items instead of interlibrary loan requests.
- Display item availability and shelf status. WorldCat Local and WorldCat Local "quick start" libraries will reduce requests for items not available for loan, due to interoperability with their ILS for access to item availability and shelf status information.
The new service will display item availability and shelf status from interoperable ILSs of libraries with WorldCat Local or WorldCat Local "quick" start to help library staff reduce the number of request for items that are not available for loan. Interoperability with a library's ILS will also enable the dynamic creation of lender settings based on item availability.
Library staff will also benefit from new expert/staff functionality now in development for the WorldCat.org search interface. OCLC is consulting with an advisory group of member libraries on the development of this functionality. Once this new functionality is fully released in 2013, FirstSearch users will have a full year to move their public WorldCat searching from the FirstSearch interface to WorldCat.org-based services.
For library users:
New, easy–to–use interface. Library users will access WorldShare Interlibrary Loan through the familiar and easy–to–use WorldCat.org-based interface to search for needed items and to place requests.
Single point of access to all types of library resources. Users will also save time because they will find and get access to electronic, digital and print resources from a sginle place
Access to more content. Information seekers will access more content through the WorldCat.org interface than has been available through the WorldCat database on FirstSearch. In addition to the library-contributed content in WorldCat, WorldCat.org delivers access to more than 140 million article-level records, ratings and reviews by other users around the world, a growing collection of vendor record sets and more.