SAE Institute
Simplify ILL to increase requests
"WorldShare ILL lets us provide the best solution for students and faculty who need to order PDF scans of print content that we own. In conjunction with WorldCat Discovery, the flexibility and customization options of WorldShare ILL allowed us to do this easily, in an intuitive, simple way for our users."
Christopher Paroz
Curator of Digital Resources, Global at SAE Institute
Established in 1976, the SAE Institute provides creative media education and qualifications to around 10,000 students across 50+ campuses in 23 countries. While nearly all of the library's resources are digital, some important physical materials are also available. At the beginning of COVID-19 lockdowns, Christopher Paroz, Global Curator of Digital Resources, knew that his staff would need an easy way for users to order digitized copies of print collection content—even if they weren't familiar with that option. "During our investigations of other systems, we found that many libraries use a ‘holds request' feature that can be confusing for users. Navigating different, complex options for physical ILL and digitization tended to turn people away."
"People can ask for a copy of any physical item through the ILL module regardless of whether we own it or not. Users don’t need to think about our processes or use the right form for back-office complexities they aren’t even aware of. They just make the request."
Christopher and his staff turned to WorldShare® Interlibrary Loan (ILL) in combination with WorldCat® Discovery. By simplifying item availability and front-end language in the discovery interface and customizing their ILL submission form, the team was able to provide one, single "get a copy" button for all requests.
After setting up the process, Christopher said that training for staff was easy. "Our new, integrated resource sharing service combined four simple workflows using almost identical systems. Staff mastered the process in no time and implementation was instant as our ILL module was already live. We were able to soft launch on the day we transitioned to the new WorldCat Discovery interface."
The result? An overnight increase of 450% in digitization requests. "We got the right process in front of our users using simple language that makes the most sense," Christopher noted. "People can ask for a copy of any physical item through the ILL module regardless of whether we own it or not. Users don't need to think about our processes or use the form for back-office complexities they aren't even aware of. They just make the request."
In the end, everyone has been happy with the system. Library staff are excited by the increased engagement. Students love the ease-of-use. Faculty appreciate that students now access more library resources. And school administrators are impressed with both the increased usage and the library's innovative solution.
"We love that we've increased use of our materials with a few easy, minimal system changes," noted Christopher. "We just want to see more engagement with the library, and this was clearly a great new way to meet an important need."
Location
- Global, with headquarters in Miami, Florida, USA
- Manages resources for 50+ campuses in 23 countries
- Provides education and qualifications in audio, animation, design, film, games, web, and mobile subjections
- Serves more than 10,000 students with 8 librarians
- Maintains less than 1% physical resources
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