The Advantages of RapidILL

Presented by Kenneth Kinslow

A resource sharing system created by the ILL staff at Colorado State in 1997.

It is for articles only. Let’s take a look at the Rapid Home Page:

What is RapidILL?

RapidILL

Rising serial costs had forced us to cut many titles and serial packages.

After these cuts, we expected to get our patrons what they needed via traditional ILL as well as through commercial suppliers.

The reality of the situation – regular ILL was not quite good enough, and we relied more and more on commercial suppliers.

Situation at Notre Dame

Mostly for the turnaround. Some concern about budget – i.e., the high

cost of commercial document suppliers.

So why did ND join RapidILL?

Choose a “pod” or group – again let’s go back to the Rapid website.

Send a file of serial holdings which goes into the centralized database of your pod or group.

Training. Trial Period.

How do you join Rapid?

$9,000 (USD) set-up fee. $8,000 (USD) annual fee. Agreement to turnaround article requests

from your partners within 24 hours. Agreement that you do not charge your

partners for articles supplied.

After the preliminaries – if you’re ready to commit -

Received 3,961 articles out of 4,163 requests – that’s a fill rate of over 95%.

Turnaround time was under 24 hours. $4.29 (USD) per article. Article requests sent via OCLC – the

turnaround time was approximately 5 days.

What were the immediate effects?

Before Rapid (fiscal year 2005-2006) over $90,000 on British Library Inside, Ingenta, CISTI, and others.

After Rapid (fiscal year 2006-2007) less than $20,000.

How did Rapid affect our use of commercial document suppliers?

Forget about saving money by not using commercial doc suppliers.

Put aside those figures of set-up and annual fees.

The real cost lies in reciprocation.

So what is the real cost of joining Rapid?

That first year we supplied 7,930 articles. In order to turn article requests around

within the 24-hour criterion, one needs to prioritize the lending queues.

Add student help. In general to get great service, we needed

to commit ourselves to providing great service.

Reciprocating with Great Service:

These “costs” notwithstanding, the consensus of opinion at Notre Dame is that the decision to join Rapid was an unqualified success.

Borrowing requests go into ILLiad. If an article request contained an ISSN or

OCLC number and a volume year, we would launch the Rapid Client, which searched the database for a match.

If a match was found, we would click OK, import the Rapid number, and mark the request as sent.

How Rapid Used to Work in the Past

The Rapid Manager has automated the process.

As soon as requests clear copyright, if these requests have ISSN or OCLC #’s and years of publication and if there is a match with the holdings of our ARL partners, they are sent via Rapid.

The requests are virtually direct requests with no staff intervention.

Improvements – the Rapid Manager

The Rapid Manager has automated the process

As soon as requests clear copyright, if these requests have ISSN or OCLC #’s and years of publication and if there is a match among your ARL partners, they are sent via Rapid

The requests are virtually direct requests with no staff intervention

Improvements – the Rapid Manager

When we sent in our serial holdings, we asked that Rapid block any requests to electronic journals.

Later we were able to unblock any e-serials the licensing agreements of which allowed for ILL.

This allowed us to deal with our licensing agreements piecemeal, rather than deflecting all requests for articles from e-journals.

Electronic Journals

Allows lending libraries to send articles in .tif or .pdf formats regardless of whether the libraries prefer to receive via Ariel or Odyssey.

RapidX inserts a cover sheet and updates the request to “filled”.

Basically RapidX simplifies the process of electronic delivery.

RapidX

Let’s go to Notre Dame’s Rapid web site Sending requests to branch libraries. Real-time statistics. Collection development tool.

Other Features

Software designed for interlibrary loan that allows for automatic processing, routing, and load leveling.

Holdings database tailored to resource sharing needs.

Such features as RapidX.

What has made RapidILL such a success?

Specific holdings information. The commitment to turn article requests

around in 24 hours. The fact that these efforts are monitored. The RapidILL staff.

What has made RapidILL work well for Notre Dame?

Questions?

Ken Kinslow – 574-631-9832 kinslow.2@nd.edu

http://rapidill.org/Default.aspx

Contact me or go to the Rapid website

Thank you very much!