January 2010

CONTENTS

Events
Resource Sharing News
OCLC for ILL
Reference Service News

Past Issues

________ January
15-19	ALA 2010 Midwinter Meeting — Boston, MA
18	WiLS office closed
20 and 22	WorldCat Resource Sharing Basics — WiLS' online course
________ February
9	WiLS Hour: Brand New ILL Policies
15 and 17	WorldCat Resource Sharing Basics — WiLS' online course
23 and 25	WorldCat Resource Sharing Tricks — WiLS' online course

April 9, 2010 — Midwest Interlibrary Loan Conference
The 3rd conference will be held at Loras College, Dubuque, IA on Friday, April 9, 2010! Register Now!

October 5, 2010 — WiLS Annual ILL Meeting
Mark your calendars for the fall annual ILL meeting. Details to follow in late summer.

 

With the migration to ILLiad 8.0 on the horizon for most of you I want to bring up the topic of ILLiad record archiving. I know — database archiving isn't the sexiest conversation, but it is something to seriously consider prior to making the move to 8.0. The main reason most of us have not moved to ILLiad 8.0 yet is that its performance when navigating or changing requests is frustratingly slow. Too many records and aging hardware seem to be the best guesses at this point. Most of the Wisconsin libraries that operate ILLiad are being migrated to considerably better hardware as this article is being written and vast improvements are being seen in ILLiad's speed. But the issue of a large record set in the shared ILLiad databases still looms.

Beyond the necessity to improve the speed of ILLiad's usage prior to moving to ILLiad 8.0 is the need to save records to meet UW System guidelines. Many of the records within UW schools' ILLiad databases are connected to financial information. I would strongly suggest looking at the library record guidelines to determine what level of record storage your library may need to do. Please see: www.uwsa.edu/gc-off/records/schedules/UW.System.Library.Schedule.pdf

At this point, Atlas is not offering any form of archiving for records that you may wish to delete from your ILLiad database, but WiLS has developed an Access archival database alongside the University of Wisconsin-Madison. If you are interested in the process to either develop your database or would simply like WiLS to archive your records for you, please contact either Eric Robinson (erobinson@wils.wisc.edu) or Allen Wenzel (awenzel@wils.wisc.edu) and we can help you accomplish this tough task.

- Eric Robinson
WiLS ILL Coordinator

Looking for a way to become a bit more efficient? You can make a toolbar for your own personal use, or to share at your place of work! "Leading brands such as Fox News, Major League Baseball, Travelocity, Softonic, TechCrunch and thousands of smaller communities and businesses now offer branded community toolbars as an extension of their website and business model.

To date, community toolbars powered by Conduit have been installed by more than 60 million users and deployed in more than 80 languages and 120 countries" (http://www.conduit.com/AboutUs/Default.aspx). In the ILL department at WiLS we constantly refer to WorldCat.org, UW Madison's catalog, ARcat, and Google (among others) for searching requests. As a way to make the process more efficient, I created a toolbar which includes all those elements. Now with one click the appropriate search page (like WorldCat) will open in a new window ready for action. I have also included a Meebo widget so if a student has a question they can get an immediate response.

It was fun and a bit of a challenge to figure out the functionality and customize the toolbar based on what would be useful for us. If you are interested in trying Conduit out I recommend jumping right in. I am willing to answer questions, though my knowledge is limited to what I have actually done.

- Angela Milock
amilock@wils.wisc.edu

Following up Anglea's advice, I recently came across a very neat tool that makes reading web pages easier. It is called Readability (lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/) and what it does is remove clutter on web pages—taking away the ads and extraneous material.

In an article (tinyurl.com/yjyq4v4) in the New York Times, David Pogue, their technology writer, called it the single best tech idea for 2009. I have been using Readability for several weeks and indeed it is very cool.

- Bob Shaw
reshaw@wils.wisc.edu

During our community manager site visits over the past few months, WiLS staff have been asked on a number of occasions about Odyssey Standalone so I thought I would reprint an article by Jeanne Chaney (now retired) of Ripon College about her experience in implementing Odyssey Standalone. Jeanne's article titled Going Paperless in ILL: an Odyssey in Electronic Delivery first appeared in the April 2008 issue of Access. Odyssey is the electronic delivery component of ILLiad. However you don't have to purchase an ILLiad license to use Odyssey Standalone — it is free (LVIS libraries and Odyssey Standalone are the only two free things I can think of in interlibrary loan!). I also recommend reading a very nice FAQ by Brian Miller of Ohio State University regarding Odyssey Standalone; it can be found at osu.illiad.oclc.org/illiad/osu/lending/odysseyfaq.html.

- Bob Shaw
reshaw@wils.wisc.edu

Bye-Bye Paper: A Strange and Wonderful Odyssey Jeanne Chaney, Circulation/ILL Manager Lane Library, Ripon College, Wisconsin

Ripon College, located in the southeast quarter of Wisconsin, is a liberal arts institution with just over 1000 students. Lane Library has three librarians and two staff persons, down 40% from four or five years ago when we lost employees to attrition. So the rest of us evaluated our processes and services, tweaked and streamlined functions, with our main goal as getting the patrons the materials and resources they needed in a timely fashion.

First Step—Eliminating Paper Request Processing via /CLIO
For interlibrary loans, we were using the old MicroEnhancer and ILLWeb, and keeping track with paper copies of each request. Boxes and boxes of paper requests. As many of you can remember, these requests had to be updated manually with due dates, renewal dates, special handling, etc. Then they had to be reviewed once a day for overdue dates. After that, a paper note was sent out to the patron or institution, since overdue notices were not yet electronic. We had four student assistants spending up to eight hours a week on interlibrary loan maintenance for about 1200 requests a year. As with many processes, you don't realize how much time is spent on a job until someone comes up with a newfangled software or process that cuts hours and steps off the job.

About three years ago, we purchased CLIO software as part of the streamlining process. It was easy to use and inexpensive to buy. It kept a record of all our transactions, and better yet, easily updated OCLC. We could easily create statistic reports and enhance our collection development analysis. More importantly, it eliminated the paper copies of the requests, the need for manual review, and took about a tenth of our time as the previous method.

Throwing out all the paper copies was both exciting and frightening. But throw them out we did, and have never looked back. Second Step—Delivering Articles Electronically Bob Shaw of WiLS spoke to me in November 2006 about the Atlas Odyssey software, which would further streamline the requests we received for articles.The software was free, easy to install, kept track of incoming and outgoing stats, and sent scanned documents electronically to other Odyssey sites. We installed it then, but due to a glitch with Internet Explorer, were unable to get it to work successfully.

We tried again in January of this year, with welcome success. Bob Shaw and Allen Wenzel answered a lot of questions I had and walked me through the operation steps. Our IT department assisted with opening port 7968 (since we have Windows XP); we attached our Epson 1260 scanner, and added my computer's IP address for Odyssey use. The installation instructions on the Atlas website were easy to follow, and for additional information, I found Brian Miller's FAQ document to be a great help (Brian is with Ohio State University Libraries Interlibrary Services).

Why did we install Odyssey software? It was an answer to sending paper copies through the U.S. mail or using our courier service, cutting off days of our patrons' wait for articles. Also, Odyssey was easy to install and worked well with my other software; the screens were user-friendly, and offered the capability to manipulate the scanned pages immediately before sending.

I soon realized that changes should be made to my policy page and custom holdings. For the Custom Holdings Paths, I added "Odyssey," and to my Custom Holding Group, I advance-searched OCLC Admin for LVIS "Group Affiliation" along with Illiad-Odyssey as a "Delivery Method" (be aware that some LVIS members charge a lending fee).

Problems encountered were few, but being on the listserv was a big help. The address is odyssey-1-bounces@iris.atlas-sys.com and a simple request will add your name to the list.

One thing I didn't realize was that in order to send a document to a borrowing institution, the address information has to be entered into Odyssey address book first. Once realized, it was easy to get the information from the policy page and add it to Odyssey.

I also couldn't figure out where the scanned document went after it was sent to the borrower through Odyssey. After reading Brian Miller's FAQ again (it's a good idea to keep your help documents handy), I found it was stored temporarily in an "outgoing" file in the Odyssey folder. Here's something I do before I send a document: click on "export" before sending the document to the borrower, until receipt is verified. Then you have a .tiff copy of the document in case you have to resend if the temporary file has already been discarded.

Because Odyssey creates .tiff files to send, and because my microform scanner creates them as well, I downloaded PrimoPDF for conversion of these files. This software does a stellar job of conversion, not only for ILL documents, but others as well, converting via the "print" function.

The Odyssey advantages are simple and effective:

• Scanning works well with Odyssey software, eliminating having to choose how and where you want the file saved. Some scanning equipment is not exactly user-friendly (like mine); or even usable, so this is a definite plus.
• Microform scanned documents (or any documents for that matter) can be imported into Odyssey for sending (mine is not connected to email).
• Eliminates the step of pdf conversion and also emailing of the document.
• Saves days in delivery; eliminates copying and sending steps.

How do we like Odyssey so far?
Since the learning phase was so short, we quickly adapted to sending and receiving documents via Odyssey. So far, 33% of lending and 60% of borrowing requests have been Odyssey-delivered. The delivery time has been reduced 84%. I am in the process of training one of my student assistants to learn the system (not four as we had before). She will spend four hours a week as opposed to the 32 spent previously. And since I'm retiring this June, I can go with a light heart, knowing all's right with the ILL world.

- Jeanne Chaney

If you have any questions regarding Odyssey Standalone, please contact Allen Wenzel (alwenzel@wils.wisc.edu) or Bob Shaw (reshaw@wils.wisc.edu).

There's a new look to OCLC's Policy Directory which after a few false starts went live earlier this week. Mark Beatty will hold a WiLS hour on February 9 to demo and discuss the new ILL policies directory.

I recommend reviewing your institution's information in the policy directory for any outdated contact information or policies. Below is the press release that OCLC issued with the new policy directory.

- Bob Shaw
reshaw@wils.wisc.edu

Your access to the Policies Directory will remain the same

• Via the existing URL illpolicies.oclc.org using your OCLC ILL authorization and password.
• Through the WorldCat Resource Sharing interface; click the Policies Directory link, or the "Libraries that Own Item" screen, or click on the red ? next to the library symbol.
• Via the existing links in ILLiad and the WorldCat Services Administrative module.

All existing data such as policies, deflections, and contact data will remain. You do not need to make any changes to your existing Policies Directory data. OCLC has implemented some new features, including real-time supplier status, an improved more user friendly interface and integration with WorldCat Registry.

A complete list of changes and enhancements is located at www.oclc.org/info/policies

New features

• OCLC supplier status changes are now reflected in real time in the WorldCat Resource Sharing interface.
• Supplier status changes can be scheduled ahead of time via the 'Schedules' tab to plan for holiday closures, vacation schedules, etc.
• Deflection, Copy, and Loan policies are all contained on one screen - less clicking to find the information that you need to help you make borrowing decisions.
• The number of policies defined is included on the "Policies" tab to make it easy to see at one glance whether or not any policy information is available.
• Search function now always available via the panel on the left side of the screen.
• Basic and Advanced search combined into one search function.
• Institution symbol search now an exact match search, no need to enter quotes before the search to get an exact match.
• Contact types updated to more accurately reflect real world use.

Changed features

• Quickview/Information moved to the Profile tab.
• Reciprocal lender field removed.
• Regional Service Provider field removed
• International lender field is no longer a Yes/No field. It is now based on the countries specified in the lending policies.
• Library type is now 'Institution type' and is based on the single type that is defined in the WorldCat Registry.
• Units no longer used. All data combined under single institution entry.
• Ability to have multiple contacts and shipping addresses to accommodate different branch locations.

WorldCat Registry data incorporated into Policies Directory interface
This information can be updated in the WorldCat Registry interface and changes will be reflected in the Policies Directory within an hour.

• Institution name and Also called name (ex. University of Minnesota Biomedical Library)
• Location (city, state/province and country)
• Institution type
• OCLC symbols
• Catalog, home page and lending URLs
• FEIN

WorldCat Resource Sharing Basics Online course (see details)

This course covers the basics of using the OCLC WorldCat Resource Sharing system for Interlibrary Loan. The course in online format will be delivered over 2 days consisting of two hour long sessions as a lecture demo with hands on homework exercises of about another 1 hour per day. There is a supporting website included.

Online course dates (1- 3 pm Central Time each day):
January 20 and 22, 2010
February 15 and 17, 2010

WorldCat Resource Sharing Tricks Online course (see details)

The on-line webinar version will be delivered over 2 days consisting of two hour long sessions as a lecture demo with hands on homework exercises of about another 1 hour per day. There is a supporting web site included.

Online course dates:
February 23 and 25, 2010 1:00 - 3:00 PM Central Time each day

Fees
$100 Non-Level 1 WiLS Members (register)
$50 Level 1 WiLS Members (register)

For more information contact Mark Beatty
608.265.5719
e-mail mbeatty@wils.wisc.edu

New books in the Reference Department:
BL65.P7 E53 2006
Encyclopedia of politics and religion (2 vol set)

BL1303 W44 2009
The A to Z of Jainism

DS557.7 W552 2009
Vietnam War almanac

PN6080 O95 2009
Oxford dictionary of quotations

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Databases recently added to the library website:
Musical America
This business source for the performing arts provides breaking news reports and an electronic version of the respected Musical America International Directory of the Performing Arts. Press releases, articles and the directory cover music and dance performance organizations, competitions and awards, festivals, foundations, significant performers and managers. The directory section includes over 14,000 contacts and addresses, including links for Web sites and E-mail addresses. These may be searched in various ways: budget category, type of event, location, facility, etc.

MLA International Bibliography (Literature) via CSA
The Modern Language Association International Bibliography indexes 4,000 English language and foreign periodicals as well as books, book chapters, and dissertations. Its subject matter includes critical works on literature, language, linguistics, film, and folklore. Reviews of literary and scholarly works are not included. There are no abstracts. Approximately 50,000 citations from journals in JSTOR's Language and Literature collection are also included, providing access back to the 1880s for those titles. MLA Bibliography is also available via Chadwyck.

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The following new resources were recently added to the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections:

The Wisconsin Oneida Language Preservation Project
This collection presents original stories and curriculum, with accompanying audio, that teaches the Wisconsin Oneida language. Materials presented here include Kindergarten Curriculum, Songs, and Stories in both English and written Oneida language. Audio files accompany these texts and provide additional instruction, allowing language learners to read and simultaneously listen to native Oneida speakers present the same material. This project is funded by a National Science Foundation grant. The following individuals and entities contributed to the successful completion of this work: Oneida Cultural Heritage Department, the Oneida Tribe of Indians of Wisconsin, Dr. Cliff Abbot (UW Green-Bay) and the UW Digital Collections Center. The collection will be completed in the coming year.

UW-La Crosse Historic Steamboat Photograph Collection
The UW-La Crosse Historic Steamboat Photograph collection consists of over 40,000 black and white photographic images of steamboats on the inland waterways of the United States, primarily the Mississippi, Ohio and Missouri rivers and their tributaries. The digitized collection now has nearly 12,000 images online. http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/LaCrosseSteamboat

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STATE OF WISCONSIN COLLECTION
The Ku Klux Klan in Northwestern Wisconsin, circa 1915-1950 This digital collection of records, which includes pamphlets, newspaper clippings, ephemera, and artifacts, document a popular movement that most Americans would rather forget - a so-called "reform" movement driven by xenophobia and bigotry. The KKK advocated patriotism, nativism, and anti-Catholicism. Although largely gone from Wisconsin by the late 1920s, the Klan persisted through the 1940s in northwestern Wisconsin. As evidenced by these materials, areas of Klan activity included Chippewa, Clark, and Pierce counties. Material for this collection has been drawn from the Wisconsin Historical Society, the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, and the University of Wisconsin--River Falls.

Please let me know if anything above would be of use to you.
Thanks for using the WiLS Reference Service.

—Fran Metcalf, fmetcalf at wils.wisc.edu
Phone: 608.263.4981
Fax: 608.263.3684
Submit a reference request