Sep 9, 2024 | Articles
The Northern Region said a fond farewell to our regional van system, and I wanted to share a few thoughts because it truly is an end of an era for ILL.
For those of you who are relatively new to interlending, you probably don’t appreciate how the regional van used to form the backbone of the UK’s inter-library loan service. When I joined Durham’s ILL team in 1997 the regional van was going strong, connecting every library in the UK with a seamless delivery service. On my first day I was given my very own, newly printed, copy of the British Library’s Directory of Library codes (yes in those days it was only available in hardcopy). For each library there was an entry with their BL code, address and other contact details as you’re no doubt familiar, but in those days, it also provided details of which regional transport scheme individual libraries belonged to.
If I wanted to send a book to a library in Cornwall, all I had to do was parcel and address it, write the region code in bold red on the parcel (SW in Cornwall’s case), and then pop the parcel into our orange crate. Parcels would be collected from each library twice a week, visiting half the region’s libraries one day and catching the other half on the next. The van would travel around your local area, and in the case of the Yorkshire and Northern Regions, it would end its journey with a trip to Boston Spa every other day.
Our last regional van collection
Books being returned to British Library would be placed into the crate without need for any address or parcel. When you consider the number of books being shipped to British Library in our heyday something as simple as this must have saved an immense amount of staff time and effort over the years. Books being shipped to other libraries would be individually parcelled, making them easy to identify. Items for local region libraries would be delivered directly next time the route took the van past that particular library, and parcels for other regions would be forwarded on to that region’s own van scheme for delivery. By this means a book could be sent from Durham to Cornwall via van within a few days. If parcels ever went adrift, then they would end up in another library. Being the helpful souls that we are, the book would be forwarded on to the correct library within a couple of days, and very little was ever lost or damaged. Weight wasn’t an issue either. I remember borrowing vocal scores for music performances where we might need 120 copies of Handel’s Messiah: this was only possible because we borrowed them through the van. As a means of transporting books, it was unparalleled for the time.
Sadly, like all things, the service has been the victim of financial cuts. In 1999/2000 the South West was the first of the regions to lose their regional van service due to budget cuts. Other regions stopped their services with little or no warning throughout 2001/2002 until only Yorkshire and the Northern Region were left. (I have to own up here that I didn’t record in my ILL annual report when the Yorkshire regional van ceased operation, but the Northern Region has been the last man standing for a number of years now.) We nearly lost the Northern Region van in 2008 when MLA North East withdrew its support, but at the last moment the running of the service was taken over by Newcastle Public Library and the transition was seamless. Being reasonably close to Boston Spa the remaining Yorkshire and Northern Regional van services were the last to go because libraries could continue to use them for returning British Library books.
ILL borrowing has been declining for years whilst at the same time service costs have spiralled, so the cost per item rocketed. The regional van had a social value for the local libraries, so the northern universities effectively subsidised the service for the benefits of the other libraries in the region. The COVID pandemic proved to be the final nail in the coffin. After ceasing physical operations during lockdown, libraries were slow to resume their inter-lending services and the number of items being transported round the region was at an all-time low, just as petrol prices went through the roof. Newcastle Public Library finally pulled the plug in 2022, emailing us in May to say that the service was no longer financially viable and that the last collection would run on 23rd June 2022. There were a few misty eyes at this announcement, but in truth we knew that the service had been running on borrowed time for a long while now.
In its day the regional van was a superb service, easy to use and completely in keeping with the spirit of co-operation that makes inter-library loans possible. The regular drivers gave the service that personal touch and it was lovely to see familiar faces week on week. For those of you who have never used the regional van it must seem like an odd thing to lament: the delivery man? Really? But not too long ago the regional vans formed the backbone of UK interlending. For those old hands like me seeing the last part of this once-great service finally stop, it does truly feel like the end of an era.
Sep 4, 2024 | Articles
In the world of ILL, nothing ever stands still and Durham’s experience with a single resource request form (FIL Journal, issue 70, February 2022, pages 21-25) is certainly no exception. During the COVID pandemic we set up a single form to cut through the confusion of all the services and request methods we had in operation at the time. Students just needed to tell staff what they wanted, and our triage team would check requests and forward them on to Customer Services, ILL or Acquisitions to satisfy the request.
Jump forward and the situation has completely changed. Panic over COVID has waned and we’re no longer going into complete lockdown whenever a new wave hits us. Students are heading back to campus and libraries are scaling back on the additional services they offer. When COVID struck, Durham was in the throes of tendering for a new library management system, so this was dusted off and in August 2022 we ended up with a sparkly new Alma system. Compared to our previous system Alma is unbelievably complex. To keep things simple the decision was taken fairly early on to just go with the out of the box request forms available in Alma, rather than try to design another single request form which would do everything the old one did, plus automate the triage process and push the data into the separate request forms.
Knowing that we would be moving back to individual request forms we made sure that the forms were clearly visible, conveniently placed and we planned plenty of user information advertising the changes. As soon as we went live with Alma and put the new forms into operation, we started getting compliments (particularly from lecturers) about how simple and fast the new service was. Part of this will be because we automated RapidILL, so article requests with sufficient information would be shunted into RapidILL without any ILL staff intervention and supplied direct to the user at any time of the day or night. For these requests we effectively have a 24/7 service, rather than 9-5pm, Monday-Friday. Cutting out the time the requests languished in the triage team email will have helped dramatically. When designing the single request form, we were overly optimistic about how quick the triage process would be. In practice this ended up a low priority task and junior staff were often whisked away to do other work when other areas were short staffed. It wasn’t unusual for requests to take 6 – 10 hours to reach ILL and there were days (too many of them) when no requests were forwarded to us at all. Getting requests feeding directly into Alma was a relief and our customers have certainly noticed the difference.
So, my conclusions having tried a one-stop-form? (And I should stress here that this is only my personal opinion.) While the students initially cried out that the services were too complicated, they haven’t complained when we withdrew the single form. They are using a smaller range of services and are coping fine without the extra help. Lecturers prefer the individual forms because they know what they want and can go straight to the service they need, without the need to add extra notes to the request to ensure that the library buys, rather than borrows, the title. (Too many mistakes happened that way.) As an interim measure, the single form was useful at a time where there was too much confusion in everyday life, with lockdown rules changing on an almost daily basis, but the format we were forced to use was massively staff-time intensive. Our experience of using the single form has had its benefits: it caused a fundamental change in how we operate, and teams are now more relaxed about passing requests about internally. For the ILL team, at this current time, the single forms are the best option and current customer feedback seems to back this up.
In short, while you can change services due to public outcry, you’ll never be able to please everyone at the same time, and as the situation changes you have to be flexible and just do the best you can. In an ideal world it would be lovely to have a single form which students could use (with automated triage this time, to keep things speedy) running alongside individual service forms for the expert users who know exactly which service they want. For me, that’ll have to stay a fantasy for the time being, but it’s definitely on my wishlist for the future.
Jan 24, 2024 | Events & Conferences, Past Events & Conferences
We are pleased to announce that bookings are now open for the Forum for Interlending (FIL) Online Conference (UK), which will take place on Wednesday 7th February 2024, 10.00-13.00 (GMT).
We have a packed programme of talks for Interlending professionals, and we are sure there will be something for everyone.
Book Here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeQtglkTx3RGPQKwjpteXh5Gl8kYV3f5mv0ORji1A4DShlWcQ/viewfor
| Session |
Timings |
Length |
Speaker |
| Welcome |
10:00-10:05 |
5 minutes |
Amanda Foster, Chair of FIL Committee
|
| British Library Results of Survey to Inform Future Collaboration around Resource Sharing
|
10:05-11:35 |
90 minutes |
Richard Ebden, Sam Tillet & Sally Halper |
| FIL Update |
11:35-11:50 |
10 minutes + questions |
Amanda Foster, Chair of FIL Committee
|
| Break |
11:50-12:00 |
10 minutes |
|
| Newly set up national scheme of regional interlending practices
|
12:00-12:15 |
10 minutes + questions
|
Jane Proctor (Northamptonshire Healthcare)
|
| WHELF+ Update |
12:15-12:30 |
10 minutes + questions
|
Bronwen Blatchford, Cardiff University |
| Event news: “Piloting copyright solutions: sustainable digital access to library stacks abroad”
|
12:30-12:45 |
10 minutes + questions
|
Kate Parsons (National Library for Sweden)
|
| Round-up and close |
12:45-13:00 |
|
Amanda Foster, Chair of FIL Committee
|
Please join via Zoom link, this will have been sent to you following your registration.
Dec 22, 2023 | Events & Conferences, Past Events & Conferences
Our next FIL Online event will be taking place on 7 February. As part of the event will be holding a discussion around the future of FIL and future events. We would also be keen to hear from anyone interested in presenting at the event – anything from a lightning talk to a full session or even a topic for discussion! Please contact Amanda Foster (Amanda.foster@northumbria.ac.uk) if you would like to volunteer to contribute to the event or if you might be interested in joining our committee.
Watch this space for further details of the event and booking information.
Dec 22, 2023 | Latest News & Updates
Many thanks to everyone for attending the recent meeting regarding the future of FIL and the proposed changes. We are happy to let you know that the vote was in favour of removing the subscription fee.
We are currently planning the next FIL event – scheduled for 7th February- and as part of the event will be holding a discussion around the future of FIL and future events.
