January 25, 2012
ILL Do's and Don't's - 2nd Installment
As promised, here are more...
Do submit a separate ILLiad request form for each individual loan or copy you need. We cannot provide multiple items on a single transaction due to the unnecessary processing and searching difficulties this creates, and because of the reasonable expectations of potential lenders. Where copies of articles and book chapters are involved, this also raises copyright issues.
Don't submit duplicate requests for the same loan or copy. If you have submitted a request and need to make a change, you can usually edit it if you catch it shortly afterwards. If ILL staff have already processed a request that you can no longer edit, please contact us by phone or e-mail to make any corrections or additions you think need to be included. Also, you may contact us regarding the status of an existing active request, rather than just submitting another transaction for the same material.
Do seek out bookstore copies of new, used, or rentable textbooks for your coursework. If they have run out of copies for your class, consider inquiring whether they have more on order. You can always check for the availability of such titles in OhioLINK as well, and you may be able to borrow a copy that way at least to hold you over for a good while. With extended renewals possible on these loans, you may even be set for a good portion of the academic term.
Don't rely on interlibrary loan services to fill your textbook requirements for the entire semester period. We can help supplement your needs up to a reasonable point, but should not have to act as a substitute for obtaining your own personal copies. Unfortunately, indefinite numbers of copies of the same title and edition cannot be assumed to be available from the pool of potential lender libraries. Local users from other universities and colleges where equivalent courses are also taught may have the same idea, and will have secured all the copies held at their own academic libraries. Even if we are able to borrow a textbook from another location, there is always the possibility that a lender's local patron will request for it to be recalled at some point in the term for their own use.
Do make a habit of indicating the specific edition of a loaned item you need, if possible. Please provide any publisher and publication year information, if you are able. It is always helpful if you can also give the ISBN, as this makes the matter unequivocal as to the specific edition required. If you do not care which edition you want us to obtain, at least give some hint of the year or possible years. Of course, if you need to borrow copies of more than one specific edition of the same title, we ask that you request these separately.
Don't forget to indicate whether or not you will accept an alternate edition. You can select this option when you submit your loan request form. This is most helpful in a case when your original indication is already for a specific edition. If you haven't specified which edition from the start, we won't be able to interpret a selection of 'No', and will have to disregard it.
Do indicate whether or not you will accept your ILL materials in a foreign language. If this is a matter of concern, you ay select the 'Accept Non-English' option when you submit your request form -- the default setting for this is 'Yes'.
Don't forget that materials you request that are originally cited in a foreign language most likely will be provided in that same language. Books, theses, articles, papers, etc., that are known with certainty to have been translated into English should also be cited in English when you submit your request, unless you actually want the original language version. Keep in mind that materials referenced by title and abstract in English may not necessarily be available full-text in English translation.
Do keep the personal information in your ILLiad profile correct and up-to-date. We ask this especially where your current e-mail and phone contact information are concerned, as this is our primary means of notifying you about your interlibrary loan service issues.
Don't create multiple user accounts in ILLiad, for any reason. If you forget your password, please use the 'Forgot Password' link available on the main login page, or contact us by phone or e-mail to reset it manually. In case you have forgotten your username, or if your account has become blocked or has been disavowed, contact ILL staff directly as well, so we may help to resolve the situation.
Hope these additional quick reminders will help you out with making better use of ILLiad and your interlibrary loan services.
ILL staff contact information--
Phone: (216)368-3517 or (216)368-3463, M-F, 9:00AM-4:30PM
E-mail: smithill@case.edu
December 27, 2011
OCLC Non-Supplier Locations
We always appreciate when you have made the effort to check the worldwide holdings of an item you need, and provide us with the OCLC accession number when submitting your ILL request. However, I would like to mention a few caveats related to the actual availability of materials that are recorded in the WorldCat database.
When you click on the Libraries worldwide that own item link within an OCLC bibliographic record, a list of library locations will appear, normally organized alphabetically by state but with Ohio appearing at the top, then Canadian and other international locations following. It used to be (if memory serves me correctly) that the status of a potential lender was indicated in the public view as follows -- uppercase OCLC symbols (or capitals in blue, underlined) signified supplier libraries, while lowercase OCLC symbols (or capitals in black, not underlined) indicated non-suppliers. The ILL staff view still retains this feature, so we are still able to immediately ascertain which libraries are most likely to supply materials through interlibrary loan.
Unfortunately, in the current public display this feature no longer persists (if it ever was there to begin with), and you as users are not able to make this distinction as are library staff. In fact, you may be led to believe that all listed locations for a particular item are potential suppliers, since all their symbols appear virtually the same (i.e., capitals, in black). Though it is not so easy for you to determine this any more, a helpful feature is still available. A great number of holdings locations also provide links to the institution libraries' online catalogs on their entry lines (though some of these may currently turn out to be broken as they haven't been updated). Those good links that exist may take you directly to the catalog entry for the particular item for the bibliographic record, or possibly only to the online catalog main search page or the library's main page. If you successfully reach a catalog record for your item at a particular library, the status and availability is usually indicated (e.g., whether item is non-circulating or currently checked out).
Finding a library catalog entry that shows available materials, however, is still not a guarantee that the institution is a potential lender, although it usually is a good indicator. The status of 'non-supplier' in an OCLC member's policy statement implies that they cannot receive requests through OCLC's ILL subsystem, our primary mechanism of operation. A library can list itself as a 'non-supplier' in one of two ways: permanently, as a matter of policy, or temporarily, according to a scheduled closure (holiday break, between academic sessions, re-location down-time, etc.). Also, OCLC libraries marked as supplier institutions can still act as virtual non-suppliers in specific circumstances, by setting up active deflection policies. These locations may choose not to lend outside their own consortium group, or may not loan certain material types (e.g., audio-visual or other special media, archival materials or items over a certain age, books that are deemed too new to loan externally).
Although there is no way now for public users to ascertain the supplier status of OCLC institutions, the following may serve as a rough guide. Most public and academic libraries in the United States and Canada will normally be suppliers, while a good deal of special libraries (corporate, private medical, museums, law firms) are not. Major research libraries in the United Kingdom and continental Europe often are suppliers, but many academic libraries in those places are not. Most libraries in Asia, Latin America, and elsewhere are non-suppliers, though a few academic libraries in Japan are. Several major academic libraries in Australia and New Zealand tend to be suppliers, as well. This is not a hard-and-fast set of rules, and is by no means exhaustive, but is just meant to give a rough approximation of what could be expected from various sources.
As obtaining materials on interlibrary loan from non-suppliers goes, the fact that they do not accept requests through the automated system in place that OCLC provides means that it is much more difficult than usual to borrow from them, if it can be done at all. Many such institutions simply are non-circulating collections, and often will not agree even to provide complete or partial reproductions. Those that will agree to offer interlibrary loan services require the use of mechanisms other than OCLC to receive request transactions. Submitting requests by these means is usually much more time-consuming, and the turnaround time for responses and receipt of materials is much longer than in more routine cases.
OCLC is not the whole story in the business of interlibrary loan, of course, but it is the principle workhorse for us and many other institutions. Libraries that do not act as suppliers through OCLC frequently are those with rare or esoteric collections, and it is in cases where these types of materials are required that our efforts will be protracted. Please be reassured that we still work outside this resource when absolutely necessary to get our users the materials they need. We just want you to be aware that, even though we try to be expeditious in the majority of our services, there are still circumstances beyond our control that put us into a 'holding pattern' (such as needing to borrow a foreign thesis during an academic session break). Your patience, understanding and consideration in such cases it always greatly appreciated.
November 23, 2011
ILL Do's and Don't's - 1st Installment
Just sending out a friendly reminder of some of the most common helpful hints for better use of your ILLiad services--
Do provide complete and accurate information in your request citations, entering each piece of data into its corresponding form field. Omitting vital pieces of data makes locating and obtaining the materials you need all that much more difficult, for both KSL ILL staff and the ILL staff of potential supplier libraries.
Don't abbreviate titles -- books, journals, conference proceedings, etc. Searching for incomplete of ambiguous titles in the databases which we use consumes excess processing time, delaying your request turnaround.
Do return or renew books by their due date. Overdue ILL books cannot normally be renewed, and items 2 weeks or more past their due date can block your ILLiad account and prevent you from using vital interlibrary loan services.
Don't request renewals after the specified due date. Renewal requests on your ILL books (if allowed or available according to lenders' specified policies) must be submitted within 5 days before original due date. It is not possible to request a renewal online through ILLiad on an overdue book. You will need to contact ILL staff about doing so, and it may be difficult or impossible to expect a lender library to accommodate such a loan extension.
Do check our library's online catalog, OhioLINK (and SearchOhio), electronic journal and electronic book collections, before choosing to use ILLiad. You can save yourself much time by locating books, journals, etc., right here in our own locally accessible collections -- and these won't need to be obtained through interlibrary loan, involving unnecessary time and effort.
Don't request materials already available through our local or consortium collections. You can find books and print journals in our own libraries' physical collections, and access electronic resources directly from campus workstations. *Exceptions apply only in the case of document delivery services provided exclusively to special user types (as noted below).
Do provide sources of citations in the appropriate ILLiad form fields (under 'Where did you learn about this item?'), and any special instructions in the 'Notes' field. We can heed this information immediately when we process your request.
Don't send e-mail comments about ILLiad transactions after already submitting requests, if at all possible. Also note that submitted request forms may be edited and re-submitted if ILL staff have not yet processed them, and you shouldn't need to submit duplicate requests either. ILL staff may have already begun processing requests in ILLiad before ever seeing any such e-mail messages, so corrections to be made after-the-fact based on these (as opposed to 'Notes' in the request form) can be more difficult and time-consuming.
Do use appropriate request forms for the specific corresponding material types -- 'Journal Article', 'Book Chapter', 'Conference Paper', 'Patent' or 'Standards Document' for copies; 'Book', 'Report', 'Thesis' or 'Other' for loans.
Don't use the 'Other' request form for articles or other reproduced materials, or for loans that already fit nicely into the other existing loan request forms. The 'Other' form is only intended for special types of materials to be borrowed, and that require more detailed information and instructions than can be accommodated in the other available forms.
*Exceptions to this policy include the following categories of verified special user statuses:
1. Distance Ed Graduates currently enrolled in Weatherhead's DM (Doctor of Management) program -- may request loans and copies from KSL library collections.
2. Faculty (in departments served by KSL for ILL purposes, but not those so served by other campus library systems, i.e., Health Sciences, MSASS, Law) -- may request copies from KSL collections.
3. Alumni Online Library participants -- may only request copies from KSL collections.
I have discussed all of these points in greater detail in previous blog entries, but just wanted to provide a quick digest of some of the most frequent issues that we encounter while processing ILL requests. There'll be more installments of this sort to come in the future, I'm sure...
October 25, 2011
One Item per ILLiad Transaction, Please - Revisited
Just another friendly reminder about how to use your ILLiad account whenever you need multiple items supplied through our interlibrary loan service...
When you submit your ILL requests in ILLiad, we prefer that you enter a single transaction for each individual piece of material that you require. If you attempt to request several on just one form, it will lead to processing delays. ILL staff will need to separate your original request into as many transactions as correspond to the total number of items actually cited, if this is practical. Under some circumstances, we may simply cancel your original request and ask that you re-enter all the new transactions properly on your own.
For example, if you need an article from a journal or newspaper which was published in more than one installment, you still have to cite each individual part in a separate form. You should do this regardless of whether they appear consecutively within the same issue or dispersed through multiple issues or volumes. The same is true when you require more than one chapter from the same book, or more than one paper from the same conference proceedings. When you need to access numerous such excerpts from a book or proceedings, it is sometimes just better to place a loan request for the entire item instead. In fact, sometimes we can even attempt to borrow an entire volume or issue of a journal or newspaper (in print or on microfilm), if circumstances warrant and we are able locate a willing lender library.
When you need to obtain considerable amounts of reproduced materials, we always recommend that you be mindful of copyright issues as they apply to your research needs. The most pertinent of them concern how many recent articles you can have reproduced from the same journal and how large a total portion of a book you can have copied, as well as any required permissions from authors or publishers. You can find helpful information in this regard, at our Copyright@Case page.
As far as loan-type requests go, you should proceed similarly for the most part. For example, if you need to borrow a 2- or 3-volume set (or slightly larger, within reason), it will usually be OK to request them altogether on a single transaction. However, when you need multiple non-consecutive volumes from a single title set or series, it is probably better to request each one individually, since we may not be able to borrow every one of them all at once from the same lender. In cases where a specific volume within a larger series has its own title, it may be preferable just to request it separately and cite it by this title rather than by that of the series. You can always make reference to the series title and volume number in the 'Notes' field of your ILLiad loan request form.
Also, when you specifically require more than one particular edition of the same book title, we ask that you still submit requests for each of them in separate transactions. Keep in mind that you also have the option of indicating whether or not you can accept an alternate edition from the one originally cited. When you are requesting different editions individually, it may be a good idea to indicate 'No' for this setting in each case.
As always, we strongly urge you to search the CASE Online Catalog for local holdings ahead of time, as well as OhioLINK, before deciding to use ILLiad to request materials.
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Copy Request Forms Available: Journal Article, Book Chapter, Conference Paper, Patent, Standard
Loan Request Forms Available: Book, Report, Thesis, Other (Misc. Loan)
Contact ILL at: smithill@case.edu
September 20, 2011
Cumulative Table of Contents for this Blog (to Date, Revised)
In case you're still interested in what I've written in the past, here is an updated chronological list of the ILL- and ILLiad-related topics covered here previously. You can locate them in 'Archives' link in the toolbar above, based on the dates listed next to the topics. Thanks for reading.
Textbooks on Interlibrary Loan -- August 26, 2008
Archives of American Art Holdings -- September 9, 2008
Requesting Renewals in ILLiad -- September 25, 2008
Proper Entry of Data into Article Request Forms -- October 14, 2008
One Item per ILLiad Transaction, Please -- October 29, 2008
Checking Local & OhioLINK Holdings First -- November 19, 2008
Blocked ILLiad Accounts -- December 3, 2008
ILLiad Loans vs. OhioLINK Loans & Local Checkouts -- December 18, 2008
Abbreviated Titles -- January 23, 2009
'Notes' and 'Source of Citation' Fields in ILLiad Request Forms -- February 13, 2009
Authorized Users -- March 4, 2009
'Library-Use-Only' Materials Borrowed through ILLiad -- March 25, 2009
'Other' Request Form (Miscellaneous Loans) -- April 16, 2009
Retrieving Electronic Delivery Articles -- May 5, 2009
Viewing E-Mail Notifications from ILLiad -- June 3, 2009
Tracking in Your ILLiad Requests & Explanation of Statuses -- July 7, 2009
Which ILLiad Site or ILL Service Point to Use? -- August 7, 2009
Variation in Electronic Delivery Quality -- September 8, 2009
Theses & Dissertations -- Availability through Interlibrary Loan -- October 6, 2009
Cancelling ILLiad Requests Already Submitted -- November 4, 2009
Alternative Request Forms & Resources -- December 8, 2009
Foreign Language Titles in Interlibrary Loan Requests -- January 22, 2010
Copyright Issues & ILL -- February 24, 2010
Converted ILL Requests -- March 24, 2010
ILLiad System Alerts -- April 27, 2010
Requesting Specific Editions & New Books on ILL -- May 19, 2010
Keeping Your ILLiad User Information Up-to-Date -- June 28, 2010
Requesting Books vs. Book Chapters -- July 28, 2010
*Cumulative Table of Contents for this Blog (to Date) -- August 27, 2010
Requesting '[Epub ahead of print]' Articles on ILL -- September 24, 2010
Multiple-Part Loans Borrowed through ILL -- October 27, 2010
Blocked from Using ILLiad - Revisited -- November 17, 2010
OCLC WorldCat and ILLiad Requests -- December 15, 2010
E-Books through Interlibrary Loan? -- January 26, 2011
Your ILLiad Password -- February 22, 2011
Requesting Entire Series through ILL -- March 25, 2011
Duplicate Requests in ILLiad -- April 21, 2011
Paperwork with Loaned ILL Books -- May 25, 2011
ILLiad Menu in Your Login Session -- June 23, 2011
Case Account Number and ILLiad New User Registration -- July 25, 2011
Courtesy Electronic Delivery Materials for Faculty ILLiad Users at KSL -- August 24, 2011
Continue reading "Cumulative Table of Contents for this Blog (to Date, Revised)"
August 24, 2011
Courtesy Electronic Delivery Materials for Faculty ILLiad Users at KSL
It may have been a little-known secret up until now, but the ILL staff of the Kelvin Smith Library have been providing reproductions of internally held materials over the past few years, as a courtesy, to eligible faculty ILLiad users via electronic delivery. This service is currently available exclusively to faculty registrants in the Kelvin Smith Library ILLiad site (whose status has also been verified against university records), from the following university divisions served by our library:
*College of Arts and Sciences
*Case School of Engineering
*Weatherhead School of Management
In addition to faculty from the eligible departments served by KSL in these colleges, we will also extend this to heads of university central administrative offices, as long as they register with a status of 'Faculty' in their ILLiad profiles.
As Kelvin Smith Library only serves the interlibrary loan needs for the above-mentioned affiliations, we do not offer this service to faculty (or any other potential user statuses) from the School of Medicine (including their medically-related interdisciplinary programs, e.g., Epidemiology & Biostatistics, Biomedical Ethics, Physiology & Biophysics), the School of Nursing, the School of Dental Medicine, the School of Law, or the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences. We recommend that you set up your new ILLiad profile or use your existing account at one of the following sites, as applicable:
CLEVELAND HEALTH SCIENCES LIBRARY
LAW Library
MSASS Harris Library
These campus library service points may dictate their own policies regarding electronically delivered reproductions drawn from internal collections, so we recommend that you contact their staff directly regarding this matter. Of course, Kelvin Smith Library is open to the entire CWRU community as far as other service offerings are concerned.
We do not offer this service to staff, graduates or undergraduates, and cannot accept requests for materials available in university library physical or electronic collections. Any such requests submitted by non-faculty users will be cancelled, and notifications will be sent which will re-direct them to the appropriate on-campus or electronically accessible collections for direct on-site use or remote access (when possible). Unless you are a genuine, eligible faculty member, please do not register an ILLiad account as such or alter your current profile status inappropriately. ILL staff reserve the right to monitor questionable statuses in users' accounts, verify them against the university directory and correct them accordingly, if necessary. Please note that distance-learning graduates enrolled in the Doctor of Management program (subsidized by WSOM) and alumni users at the premium service level (fee-based) are entitled to request on-campus materials for electronic reproduction and delivery, as special exceptions.
Faculty who wish to take advantage of this must also have opted to accept electronic delivery in their ILLiad profile settings -- this does not appear as an option in your personal information data fields when you register as a new user or change your current user information, since 'Yes' has been the default value for all new registrants as of the Fall of 2007. If your account pre-dates this and you are unsure, please contact the ILL staff by phone at (216) 368-3517 or (216) 368-3463 (M-F, 9:00 AM-4:30 PM), or by e-mail at: smithill@case.edu. Of course if you have routinely been able to download electronically received articles previously through your ILLiad account, then your profile is already set to 'Yes' for this option. Also, whenever you are logged into your account, an alert should appear in the right-hand column in your main page regarding the availability of this special service.
Eligible faculty users may request journal or newspaper articles, book chapters, conference papers, and the like, from KSL collections through their ILLiad accounts. We suggest that you first check availability of journal articles and other electronically-available documents by searching our Electronic Journals collections before you choose to submit an ILLiad request transaction. You can also search our library's Online Catalog in advance, as the title listing there may also include a direct link to an available electronic version. We suggest that you please avoid using ILLiad to request articles already available from our electronic journal collections, to save yourself time and prevent possible processing delays for ILL staff. When you do decide to submit an ILLiad copying request for local materials, you can also use information extracted from the catalog by entering it into the appropriate form, to assist ILL staff with locating the items more quickly.
This courtesy service does not include retrieval or delivery of physical loans of books (circulating or non-circulating) or journals from our internal collections. Faculty may use the following forms, as applicable: Non-Circulating Book Request, Non-Circulating Bound Journal Request. This service should also not be used for requesting titles from electronic book collections, or for anything constituting a copyright violation -- please consult here for further assistance: Copyright@Case.
Of course anything that is not available within the Kelvin Smith Library or in its local satellite branches (i.e., R.R.C.C. Storage, Music, Astronomy) will be requested through regular interlibrary loan channels. Articles and other reproducible documents will then be supplied by potential lender library partners, through electronic delivery.
We hope that our faculty can make their best use of this service, and we are happy to assist with their research needs through this special offering.
July 25, 2011
Case Account Number and ILLiad New User Registration
When you register as a new user in the Kelvin Smith Library's ILLiad site (or in that of any of the other campus library systems for that matter), you will be required to verify your current affiliation with the university. When you enter your profile information in the registration form accessed from the 'First Time Users' link on our main logon page, you will need to provide your 'Case Account Number' in order to do so. A few years ago, this number (which is uniquely assigned to every member of the CWRU community), was instituted so as to replace your Social Security Number for various administrative functions including library circulation account records, for obvious security and legal reasons. Staff and Faculty -- this is NOT to be confused with your Case Employee Number.
ILLiad requires this piece of information in order to authenticate against your university records when you set up a new profile, as well as every time you begin a new login session. It also also checks whether you are in good standing, i.e., you do not have excessive fines accrued in your library records. Your unique number may be looked up in real time at the following site, by entering your Case Initials and network password: Case Account Number. Please note that this link also appears near the corresponding field in the ILLiad New User Registration form.
Please keep in mind that if your account number is not correctly entered when you register, you will receive the error message 'Blocked due to user not found.' after you click on the 'Submit Information' button. This may occur if you entered the wrong ID number or typed it incorrectly, or the number is missing from your circulation account. If you have already successfully registered, you may possibly see the message 'Blocked due to fines.' if you have $15 or more in charges indicated in your record. Should any of these circumstances impede your access to ILLiad service, we recommend that you get in touch with our circulation department for assistance with rectifying the status of your library account. You may contact them directly at 216-368-3506 or at smithcirc@case.edu.
Please also note that an entry line for your Case Account Number does not appear anywhere within the 'Change User Information' form in subsequent ILLiad logon sessions, since this number will never be different from the one you originally provided as long as you remain affiliated with the university. Under normal circumstances, you will never have to update this number in your ILLiad profile on a future occasion.
We hope that this clarifies any confusion regarding the identity of your Case Account Number, as well as its application to your ILLiad account setup and subsequent interlibrary loan services. If you have further questions or concerns, please contact us at (216) 368-3517 or (216) 368-3463 (M-F, 9:00 AM-4:30 PM, or at: smithill@case.edu.