VIVA ILL Community Forum, July 13, 2007 

Sweet Briar College, Sweet Briar, VA

Just over one hundred participants from across Virginia attended the 2007 VIVA ILL Community Forum.  Members and friends of the ILL Subcommittee who arranged the meeting included:  Dan Wilson--Chair of the ILL Subcommittee, Moderator; Joe Molloy--local arrangements and welcome;Virginia Kinman and Shaunna Hunter--registration and welcome;Stuart Frazer-- Community Discussion leader,Odyssey demonstration, VIVA ILL Goals and Objectives for 2007/2008;Elizabeth Teaff (Washington and Lee University, "friend")--Odyssey demonstration;Susan Yowell (University of Virginia, "friend")--VIVA ILL wiki editor, recorder, photographer.

 VIVA Support:

Kathy Perry, VIVA Director, and Tansy Matthews, Associate VIVA Director, attended the day-long meeting and provided the registration packets and  nametags.  They also provided updates or clarifications on behalf of VIVA throughout the meeting.  The VIVA ILL Community is very grateful to Kathy and VIVA for again subsidizing travel and meeting costs for the members.  Thanks!

 Program:

(see end of meeting report for link to participant evaluations)

8:30-9:15      Registration, Continental breakfast

9:15-9:30      Welcome, introductions, recognitions (Dan and Joe):

Dans PPT 2007 VIVA Interlibary Loan Community Forum.pps 

Dan introduced the members of the ILL Subcommittee and recognized Kathy Perry and Tansy Matthews of VIVA.  He introduced Mary Sellen of Christopher Newport University as the new Chair of the Resource Sharing Committee, replacing Eileen Hitchingham of Virginia Tech.

His PowerPoint presentation featured a screen shot of the Subcommittee's wiki, highlighting the page for last year's Forum.  It also listed "threads" from last year's Forum for follow-up:  Ariel vs Odyssey, ILLiad (a better deal from Atlas for VIVA members?), and Mentoring.  He showed the group a suggestion box and forms to be filled out for anyone who would like to volunteer as a mentor.  The suggestion box would remain on the registration table for the day.

Dan noted that several members of the ILL Subcommittee are finishing the second year of their second term, the maximum tenure:  Stuart Frazer, Shaunna Hunter and Collette Macin.  The members finishing the first year of their second term, who will be leaving in September 2008 are:  Dan Wilson, Joe Malloy, Virginia Kinman, Bethany Wright, Kyle Vaughan, and Kathy Tilton.

Joe Molloy welcomed the group on behalf of Sweet Briar College, provided some logistical information for the meeting and introduced the new VIVA ILL community members for this year, also mentioning several members who are retiring.

9:30-10:20    “New Trends in Interlibrary Loan” (Cyril Oberlander):  (PowerPoint presentation to be available soon)

Cyril provided a PowerPoint presentation giving an overview of new and developing technologies in information retrieval and sharing.  One idea to consider is that purchasing books and giving them to borrowers to keep, rather than lending, is actually more cost effective in many cases.  He stressed the importance of all institutions updating their holdings in OCLC in order to improve the effectiveness of the borrowing/lending processes.   

10:20-10:30  Break

10:30-11:10  Community discussion on best practices for lending non-traditional formats (moderated by Stuart Frazer): 

Stuart provided a PowerPoint presentation that gave an overview of the history behind the development of various formats for information provision; i.e. oral to print, and now print to visual.  The current trend is toward collaborative authoring rather than the "lone artist."  Much of the following discussion focused on difficulties faced by libraries who find themselves being asked for material, such as DVDs and CDs that are mostly, or entirely, for entertainment purposes rather than for educational use.  This trend is engendering discussion about how library policies support the mission of their institutions, which will likely cause some revising or enhancing of policies along with the development of the trend. 

Another question discussed pertained to the capabilities of library computers and the questionable legality of some processes being used, such as downloading music and streaming videos, sometimes through Blackboard.

11:15-12:15  Concurrent Sessions:

"The Resource Sharing Detective: Citation Tracing" (Russell Palmer, Solinet)

RussellPalmer.ppt 

Following Russell's presentation, several members contributed further ideas for finding obscure sources:

• Cyril mentioned "ZoomInfo.com" for finding authors, as well as searching Google using the author's name plus "vita" to find works published by that particular author
• ILL staff at VMI have found that museums and historical societies are excellent sources for information and are eager to share.  The staff at VMI have created a "cheat sheet" of these sources and arrange to borrow informally via telephone or can use the ALA form.
• Cyril mentioned IFLA as a good source for international information
• there was some discussion about how much work ILL staff should be expected to do for their patrons so that they are not actually doing the person's research for them.  (More like a Reference librarian, less like traditional ILL services.)  Stuart thought that ILL staff should serve as consultants for patrons, not just work through established procedures.  Cyril added that the process should probably be about 80% automation and about 20% consulting.

Interlibrary Loan 101 Workshop (facilitated by Tammy Hines)

12:15-1:15    Lunch

1:15-2:15      Odyssey Demonstration (facilitated by Elizabeth Teaff & Stuart Frazer):

 Odyssey Standalone.ppt 

Elizabeth and Stuart showed how to download the standalone version of Odyssey and answered several questions about how it functions, especially with regard to running it along with Ariel.  They gave information about places to find help with Odyssey, such as an FAQ.  (It was noted that UVa and Radford need to be added to the list of libraries now using Odyssey.)  Elizabeth mentioned that W & L uses trusted sending for all requests, and there was some discussion as to whether trusted sending should be applied to all libraries or designated ones.

2:15-2:45      Solinet Update (Russell Palmer):

Russell noted some improvements to OCLC as well as some known issues.  Some points from the discussion following:

• question regarding switching between groups in OCLC; not using custom pathways (Cyril)
• the default label template is not working with the USPS machines
• could, or should, there be a GAC created for VIVA? (Cyril)
• would like to speed up postings of alerts
• encourage a higher level of system monitoring so that OCLC would take care of problems first without having to wait to hear from a library about a problem
• could we use Amazon through OCLC to buy for us?  Yes, but how would we coordinate this with our acquisitions departments?  Still might be a good idea to pursue (Cyril).
• is there a role for any mentoring from SoliNET?  Some helps are already there, some outreach to library schools, but would like to expand (Cyril).  Russell is attending a trainers forum this week and will mention these ideas there.

2:45-3:00      VIVA Update (Kathy Perry):

• Kathy thanked the ILL Subcommittee for planning the meeting, and introduced Tansy as the new Associate Director.
• she explained that the PBS videos that VIVA has purchased  (mentioned earlier by Stuart in the Community discussion session) are a new format to consortia and the processes for making them available to everyone are still being worked out.  The problem was that PBS wouldn't allow IP address authentication.  VIVA is now working with Shibboleth authentication.
• Tansy noted that the PBS videos are now cataloged down to the episode level
• notable new collections purchased:  the Blackwell Synergy package and the IEEE journals (128 engineering journals).  This purchase represents a major cost-sharing effort among the schools and VIVA.
• the budget for VIVA is very tight this year, and there has been much cost-cutting.  The effects may not be noticed by and large, which will be good.
• with regard to the invoice for matching funds, ILL credits will be given this year
• travel information for conference participants is in everyone's folders.  Procedures are designed to follow Virginia and George Mason University's rules.  Tansy clarified the requirements of the form for lodging and travel.  Kathy recommended that participants call Liz Wright at VIVA if they have further questions.

3:00-3:15      VIVA ILL Goals for 2007/2008 (Stuart Frazer)

Before initiating the discussion of Goals for the coming year, Stuart reminded everyone that the ILL Subcommittee needs to replenish some people, as several are going off the committee.  Those who are interested can contact Mary Sellen, the new Resource Sharing Committee chair, at Christopher Newport University.

How would we like ILL departments to improve over the year; what can VIVA ILL do to help?

1. more effectively find out what our users want; could we develop a standard instrument for all in VIVA to use?  We would need to identify how best to get a good response from people, possibly use the wiki?
2. update our holdings in OCLC, especially the most requested titles
3. place more trust in Odyssey; determine how best to enhance the quality of scanning.  Perhaps try a pilot of all using Odyssey for a two week period?
4. create manuals for new ILL staff ; could VIVA assist with this,or perhaps use the wiki?  The Outreach Committee is working on collecting helpful resources, including using local mentoring.
5. work to resolve "IT" type problems that stand in the way of some mentoring/sharing of help.  Establish better relations with our IT people!
6. OCLC statistics reports:  is there any way to customize the queries?  We will need to email Russell about this.

(Note re updating OCLC holdings (Stuart):  in most of our institutions, our Cataloging/Technical Services departments would have strong objections to ILL staff changing any of our holdings in OCLC, which has tradionally been the domain of Cataloging.  Cyril:  perhaps the best strategy is to email the incorrect holdings records to Cataloging staff as the titles are found, rather than asking for a large portion all at once.  We should probably stress the priority titles, which can be identified by using a SoliNET report or an ILLiad report.  Maybe the Resource Sharing Committee can talk about a strategy for dealing with this problem.)

3:15-3:30      Closing (Dan Wilson)

Dan thanked Kathy and Tansy, along with all VIVA staff for their support of the meeting, and Joe Molloy for making all the arrangements for the meeting at Sweet Briar.  He expressed appreciation to Stuart for his years of work on the ILL Subcommittee, since Stuart is leaving the committee this year.  He thanked the speakers for their participation:  Cyril, Stuart, Russell, Elizabeth, Tammy and Kathy.  

He reminded the participants to fill out the evaluation forms in their folders and to leave them, along with their name badges, on the table in the lobby.

The meeting ended with best wishes for safe travels home for everyone.

Evaluations of 2007 Forum.pdf 

[Note from Susan:  would you like to add information to the meeting report, or do you see corrections that need to be made?  If so, you can edit the page yourself if you like, or just send me an email and I will edit.  My email address is:  ssy2n@virginia.edu  ]

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