Ladies, this is what we have been waiting for! And it should be able to talk to ILLiad! I recevied the following message from Steve at the State Library yesterday:
Just when you thought you knew reQuest so well you could do it in your sleep, we’re gonna shake things up a bit – but just a bit, so don’t panic. These enhancements will take effect on Monday, December 3, 2007.
Some background: several years ago, an international standards organization (NISO) developed a standard set of responses to be used in interlibrary loan systems, so that systems of different types could communicate with each other. We hadn’t implemented that in Connecticut, because all reQuest participants used the same system (AGent, i.e. reQuest). However, several of our larger participants use other ILL systems to manage their ILL requests, and they’d like to be able to import reQuest ILLs into their systems, rather than entering all their reQuest ILLs manually. In order to do this, we need to turn on the standard responses for everyone in our consortium. We will be moving from the AGent closed ILL system to the AGent ISO ILL system, which has the standard set of responses.
A benefit of moving to the ISO system is the use of “Reasons.” When the lending library responds to a request, they will be able to use the ‘Reasons’ list to:
* clarify their reasons for not sending an item
* state conditions under which they will send an item
* ask for changes to the request (such as an indication of copyright compliance)
How this will affect your library:
For BORROWING, you’ll see very little difference. You’ll still create and approve requests just as you always have. Where you will see a slight difference is in the use of the term ‘Conditional’ instead of ‘Proposed Change’ if the lender needs to ask you a question about your request (different edition OK?, can we copy a section for you?, etc.). As a borrower, you can then Accept Condition (which will return the request to that lender) or Reject Condition (which will move the request on to the next lender). You may also be able to see more detailed reasons for why a lender said no – ‘at bindery’, ‘lacking copyright compliance’, ‘poor condition’, etc.
For LENDING, you’ll notice a few more changes in terminology.
* Lender Pending Responses will be: ‘Will Supply/In Process,’ ‘Shipped,’ ‘Retry,’ ‘Conditional,’ and ‘Will Not Supply.’
* For each ‘Lender Pending Response,’ you will be able to specify a ‘Reason.’ (See the attached .pdf for the full list.)
* Notice that ‘Will Supply’ and ‘In Process’ will be a single category – ‘Will Supply/In Process’. Lenders can still use this category to indicate that they’ve received a request; it will halt the 3-day “Days to Respond” countdown. If you’re used to using the ‘Will Supply’ category to keep track of titles you’ve put on hold for another library, you can use the Reason ‘On Hold’ to identify those.
* ‘Conditional’ replaces ‘Proposed Change’ – you’ll still use the History Notes to ask the borrower a question about the request
* ‘Shipped’ is now split into ‘Shipped’ and ‘Shipped (nonreturnable)
* ‘Renewal’ is now split into 2 categories – ‘Renew Pending’ (when the renewal is requested before the due date) and ‘Renew Overdue’ (when the renewal is requested after the due date)
* ‘Check in’ replaces ‘Complete’ as an action – ‘Complete’ still shows up as a status after the item has been checked in.
Both the borrowing and lending library can use the status, ‘Lost’, to indicate that an item has been lost, either by a client or in delivery.
Hope this doesn’t cause too much confusion – let me know if you have questions about interpreting the new terminology.
