[ILL-L] Problem with international lender settings in new OCLCPolicies Directory

Thu Dec 10 10:23:01 EST 2009

Thanks for the explanation Jennifer. I know this will be helpful in our
case; Canada is the only country we lend to, but we get requests for
loans from all over the world.  

Heather Campbell, Senior Librarian

Manager- Interlibrary Loan 

Jacksonville Public Library (JPL)

303 North Laura Street

Jacksonville, FL 32202-3505 heatherc at coj.net  (904) 630-2986

________________________________

From: ill-l-bounces at webjunction.org
[mailto:ill-l-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Corsi,Jennifer
Sent: Thursday, December 10, 2009 6:36 AM
To: ill-l
Subject: RE: [ILL-L] Problem with international lender settings in new
OCLCPolicies Directory

Let me provide a little background on why we made the change to the
International Lender field in the new Policies Directory.

Over the years we have had complaints that the data in the Policies
Directory is too ambiguous.  And that the International Lender
designation in particular was too broad, being just a 'Y' or 'N' flag.

 And that many libraries do some lending internationally but not
necessarily to all countries.  For example, a library may be willing to
send items to Canada but not to ship them overseas.  

So, while the new Policies Directory does not attempt to overhaul all of
the existing data we did make some changes to a few of the fields.

We changed the International Lender field to be derived from the
location data that was supplied in a library's Copy and Loan policies.  

And yes, I agree that this changed the designation from being wide open
to a much narrower definition.

Thanks to Jeff for bringing up this discussion, because we do want the
Policies Directory data to help you make borrowing decisions.  So I'm
interested to hear your ideas on how to make the designation more
useful.  Jeff's idea of allowing libraries to designate by region
whether or not they will loan is one idea.  Another is displaying 'Any'
if a library has a policy that states that they will loan to any
location.

Please do send me your thoughts on this  -   Jennifer_corsi at oclc.org 

Thank you,

Jennifer Corsi

OCLC Delivery Services

From: ill-l-bounces at webjunction.org
[mailto:ill-l-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Jeff Gima
Sent: Wednesday, December 09, 2009 6:03 AM
To: ill-l
Subject: [ILL-L] Problem with international lender settings in new
OCLCPolicies Directory

Dear ILL-L colleagues, 

Looking back through the messages on ILL-L, I didn't notice any
discussion about the new OCLC policies directory, but after looking at
the preview there's one feature that could be potentially detrimental to
ILL borrowing services at libraries that depend on international
suppliers. I've pasted below a message I sent to OCLC describing the
problem, but to summarize: the new Policies Directory may discourage
libraries from making themselves visible as willing international
lenders, since they have to select every individual country they'd be
willing to lend to. This will make it difficult for borrowing libraries
to identify potential international suppliers -- the libraries in the
consortium I manage, for example, would all be affected, since they
support English-language universities in mostly non-English language
countries and therefore depend significantly upon international lenders.

Does your library borrow internationally, and do you feel you'd be
affected by this? 

Is your library willing to lend/supply internationally, but you feel
that you wouldn't necessarily select every individual country in the
Policies Directory that you'd be willing to lend to? (i.e. because it
would be too cumbersome to select each; you might be willing to lend in
some cases to countries that aren't selected on your Policies Directory
list; etc.)

Please speak up, and share any such concerns here and with OCLC (e.g.
Jennifer Corsi, OCLC Delivery Services, corsij at oclc.org)

Jeff Gima

-- 
Jeff Hiroshi Gima
Director, American International Consortium of Academic Libraries
American University of Paris Library
tel : 0140620557 (from outside France: +33 140620557)
fax: 0957440428 (from outside France: +33 957440428)
http://amicalnet.org

-----------------------------------------------------
[clipped from message to Jennifer Corsi (OCLC)]
...
I wonder if there's some other practicable way to manage the
"international lender" settings besides requiring every possible country
to be indicated. Here's the problem as I see it:

*	The new version gives inaccurately restrictive results. In the
new Policies Directory, I only find one library that's willing to loan
to us in France: Bartow Public Library. obviously this isn't accurate,
since we get books and articles from US libraries fairly frequently, and
we've never requested from Bartow. I believe we currently have a Custom
Holding Group that we made at least partly out of 'international
lenders' as shown in Policy Directory; I haven't checked to see how many
of these 'international lenders' are actually the ones that supply us,
but I'm pretty sure that at least some are. 
*	The new version makes it difficult to indicate willingness to
lend to regions or large groups of countries. Imagine that you're
setting your library's international lending policy in the Directory.
You're willing to loan to European countries generally for some crazy
reason. In the model proposed here, you'd have to select each of the 27
countries you're willing to lend to. Or more (or less), depending on
which are counted as Europe. I doubt you'd be willing to analyze each
country for inclusion in your list. Imagine if your library was willing
to loan worldwide - you'd have several hundred individual countries to
decide upon and check off, and the reality is probably that you would
end up deciding case by case for certain countries anyway.
*	A minor issue I'd thought I would point out: I'm not sure it's
necessary to allow filtering 'International Lender' with up to 10
countries; if I'm a borrowing library, looking for lenders, I only need
to indicate one country: my own.

It seems to me that the 'international lender' flag should be really
just an indicator of general practice, not a strict rule to which the
library will be held. In other words,  a library should be able to
indicate "Europe" or "Africa" if they want, for example, if it's largely
true that they would loan to most countries in that region, with the
understanding that they might not loan in certain cases. If it was
necessary, maybe there could be an "exclusion" flag that a library could
also set , for certain countries, in case misunderstandings became
common.

The way it is now, I think libraries will be discouraged from indicating
that they're international lenders, or they will at least be encouraged
by the system to select a smaller number of countries than they might
actually be willing to lend to. 

Thanks for considering this long-winded feedback! Aside from this one
issue, I think the new Directory looks great!

Jeff

2009/11/30 Corsi,Jennifer <corsij at oclc.org>

New OCLC Policies Directory to be installed Sunday, December 13, 2009

The project to implement a new Policies Directory has been underway for
the past year and is finally coming to fruition.  A new Policies
Directory interface 

will be installed on Sunday, December 13th.  

The install will also include a new underlying database and platform for
the Policies Directory.  

Your access to the Policies Directory will remain the same. 

*	Via the existing URL (https://illpolicies.oclc.org
<https://illpolicies.oclc.org> ) using your OCLC ILL authorization and
password.

*	Through the WorldCat Resource Sharing interface, either by
clicking the Policies Directory link or on the 'Libraries that Own Item'
screen, by clicking on the red ? next to the library symbol.

*	Via the existing links in ILLiad and the WorldCat Services
Administrative module.

All existing data (policies, deflections, contact data) will remain.
You do not need to make any changes to your existing Policies Directory
data. 

We've implemented some new features, including real-time supplier
status, an improved more user friendly interface and integration with
WorldCat Registry.
A complete list of changes and enhancements is located at
http://www.oclc.org/info/policies/ <http://www.oclc.org/info/policies/> 
Coming later this week - a preview environment for a sneak peak at the
new interface.  Details to follow.

The Policies Directory interface and access to the data in the Policies
Directory will be unavailable from 8:00 pm Saturday, December 12th
through 6:00 am Sunday, December 13th Eastern Standard Time.

WorldCat Resource Sharing will be unavailable on Sunday, December 13th
from 2:00 am - 6:00 am Eastern Standard Time.

Jennifer Corsi

OCLC Delivery Services

6565 Kilgour Place

Dublin, OH 43017

Ph: 614-761-5372

800-848-5878

corsij at oclc.org

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