TIPS AND TRICKS

A short odyssey to implement ILLiad

Late last November, staff at the Saginaw Valley State University Library in Michigan decided to use OCLC ILLiad resource sharing management software to help automate their interlibrary loan. In January, Saginaw Valley State staff had the ILLiad system up and running.

How did they do it?

Thomas Zantow, interlibrary loan librarian at Saginaw Valley State, said he chose ILLiad after determining what the library needed to provide the best interlibrary loan service for the university, and finding the solution in ILLiad.

Zantow saw an online demonstration of ILLiad and realized that the system could do everything the university needed to facilitate interlibrary loan. “We were clear about what we wanted to present to our users,” said Zantow. “We had a good sense of our basic workflow and were prepared to be flexible to take advantage of ILLiad’s capabilities.”

The real challenge was pulling the plug on the library’s previous automated interlibrary loan system. The old system was taken down at the end of December, and the library started to use ILLiad in January. So there wasn’t much time to fret. “My hope was that in bringing up all modules immediately and enduring the intensity of troubleshooting before the semester started that the ‘pain’ would be mine alone and not our patrons’,” said Zantow.

Zantow said the implementation was smooth due to cooperation with the library’s Information Technology Services staff, and the power of ILLiad software.

“Once you make the decision to bring it up, simply rely on the installation crew—and the horsepower of ILLiad. It’s a very intuitive system.”

Zantow said the example of Saginaw Valley State’s success in implementing ILLiad is not necessarily to encourage other libraries to follow their ambitious timeline.

“The real lesson is that installation should not be a frightening experience. ATLAS, OCLC and the growing, proactive and
immensely helpful community of ILLiad users fairly guarantees success,” he said.

Acronym Soup

FRBR
Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records is a 1998 recommendation of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) to restructure catalog databases to reflect the conceptual structure of information resources. The FRBR model includes four levels of representation: work, expression, manifestation and item. OCLC plans to implement a FRBR view of WorldCat on FirstSearch.

FAST
Faceted Application of Subject Terminology: A Simplified LCSHBased Vocabulary. The purpose of adapting the LCSH in a faceted schema with a simplified syntax is to retain the very rich vocabulary of LCSH while making it easier to understand, control, apply and use.

xISBN
A Web service that accepts a single International Standard Book Number, compares it to a FRBRized version of WorldCat, and returns all ISBNs in WorldCat that are associated with the same work as the original number. Because it’s a Web service, xISBN can be invoked from a larger workflow that supplies the initial ISBN then uses the returned set of associated ISBNs in a subsequent step.

NCIP
NISO Circulation Interchange Protocol is a standard that will define the various transactions needed to support circulation activities among independent library systems. The new protocol is expected to support the circulation of printed and electronic materials and will facilitate direct user borrowing, remote user authentication, on-line payment and controlled access to electronic documents.

NetLibrary: a flavorful blend of services | OCLC Labs