Major Departmental Goals

Develop our patron driven acquisition program.

InterLibrary Loan Patron Driven Acquisitions

The Furman University Library ILL / PDA Pilot began on March 25, 2013 and officially ended on May 3, 2013. During that time, 3 items were selected for purchase, ordered and received. The first 2 books were ordered, received and cataloged within 9 days, and the remaining book took a mere 3 days to arrive on the hold shelf. It was decided that the number of items being added to the collection through this means would not be a burden on the staff processes involved, and the pilot period was thereby concluded by instituting ILL / PDA as a regular practice.

To date, nearly 3 months from the pilot start, a total of 9 items requested by 5 faculty members and 1 student have been added to the collection. The longest turnaround time has been 19 days for a single item, and the shortest, 2 days, with an average of 8 days turnaround. A few of the books were already queued up for the acquisitions plan with YBP, and shipping was expedited. Considering that all of the books were newly published and not yet available through ILL, the only other recourse would have been to cancel the requests and ask the patrons to resubmit in 4-6 months, as has been our practice in the past. This procedure provides exponentially better patron service.

Parameters

ILL criteria:

• Print monographs, audio CDs
• Not owned by Furman Libraries
• Not available from PASCAL libraries
• Not a University Press book
• Not older than 2 years
• No music scores, foreign publishers, foreign language
• Content meets general acquisitions profile requirements including Leisure
• Acquisitions criteria:
• Price under $100
• Can be ordered and arrive within 2 weeks, standard shipping only

ILL workflow:

• Create ILLiad queue “Being purchased/PDA” for items sent to Acquisitions. This status is viewable by the patron in their account.
• Send High Priority email to Acquisitions with patron name, title, author, publisher, date, and indicate if intended for Leisure Collection.
• If denied by Acquisitions, route to Awaiting Borrowing Processing
• If and when completed, cancel request with “Reason for Cancellation” being “Purchased/PDA”

Acquisitions workflow:

• Search for Items according to criteria. If not located or available in correct format, out of stock or print, or not able to be delivered within designated or reasonable time frame, an email will be sent notifying ILL that the item is not available for PDA.
• If available for purchase, Acquisitions flags order record for RUSH processing with notification for ILL, places hold on patron record and on Leisure Collection, if indicated. Selector will be noted as ILL/PDA.
• Acquisitions receives item, notifies ILL by email that the item is in the building, and Cataloging RUSH processes before delivering to Circulation.