[ILL-L] Direct Requesting

[Denise L Montgomery]

The secret of successful Direct Request is how you set up your 
profiles. I have set mine up so it deflects anything that is held  
within our state, because otherwise the system is too likely to 
automatically send to the big places before sending to any of the 
smaller libraries within the state. Also, make sure you put down what 
you are willing to pay--or not pay--for each patron group.
And finally, in order not to have a lot of unmediated requests going 
out for textbooks used in current classes, I set up the student profile 
so it does not do  Direct Request for any books published within the 
last two years. That also takes care of bestseller type items that we 
probably should be ordering for the collection instead, because they 
come to my attention promptly instead of wasting other people's time 
going out as ILL requests. 

And one other thing: set it up for books only. Again, you don't want to 
waste other people's time by sending out unmediated requests for media 
to places that don't loan.

After you've done all that, you will probably find that you aren't 
processing a lot of things via Direct Request, but it will take a few 
requests off your hands.

I'm sure other people have different strategies for how they've set up 
their profiles, but to my way that's the surest way of avoiding some of 
the "problems" that you're thinking about.
                                   
                                Denise Montgomery 
                                Valdosta State University Library
                                          

Sarah McHone-Chase wrote:


>Hello, 
>
>Our institution is considering Directing Requesting. I'd be interested 
in hearing from other institutions who are doing this. Has anyone 
experienced any major problems?
>
> 
>
>Sarah M. McHone-Chase
>Information Delivery Services Librarian
>Founders Memorial Library 127
>Northern Illinois University 
>DeKalb, IL 60115-2868
>Telephone: (815) 753-9860
>Fax: (815) 753-2003
>mchonechase at niu.edu
>
>
>
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