Three Ways to Elevate Your Library with Interlibrary Loan

Over the last several years, academic institutions have experienced substantial changes in all aspects of teaching, learning, and research. Libraries have served – and continue to serve – a critical part in this transformation. That’s why many of them are partnering with ProQuest to help give their users the best possible experience in the new reality.

Last week, we kicked off a new blog series to highlight some of the resources that are bringing the greatest value to today’s libraries. First, we featured Leganto, the Ex Libris course resource management system. Today, we’re switching gears to talk about RapidILL, a dynamic and community-oriented interlibrary loan (ILL) and resource sharing system designed for quick and efficient transactions.

Here are three ways to accelerate your library’s impact with RapidILL.

• • Connect with other libraries. No library has the ability or budget to own everything, but since the 1960s, resource sharing has been key to overcoming this limitation. RapidILL enables libraries to come together and deliver the highest level of service through ILL. RapidILL’s standardized processes facilitate transmissions and request fulfillment among members of RapidILL library groups. This allows institutions which have no direct bilateral lending arrangements with one another to share resources on agreed-upon terms thanks to RapidILL. Libraries therefore have access to collections that are broader, deeper and of higher quality than ever before.
  • Drastically increase your fulfillment rate. As a resource-sharing system uniquely built around a community of reciprocal users, RapidILL has an outstanding request fulfillment rate of 95% and an average delivery time of less than 12 hours for digital assets. This is primarily the result of a mutual commitment by every institution in the RapidILL community to 24-hour turnaround times and free-of-charge ILL transactions. This is significantly better than anything customers experienced before joining the RapidILL community.
  • Save resources and costs. Much of a RapidILL library’s cost savings can be measured in staff time and resources. Since the RapidILL workflow can be automated on the borrowing side, patron requests can route to partner libraries for fulfillment, and then be delivered to the patron without staff management. This leaves library personnel free to handle more complex tasks that add greater value to the institution, such as assisting faculty and students and developing in-house collections. Additional savings are achieved because there are no transaction charges within the RapidILL network of libraries, nor are there any invoicing costs in the reciprocal system.

Read a conversation with Mike Richins, Director of Product Management for RapidILL and Sharona Sagi, Vice President of Resource Sharing Solutions for Ex Libris.

Learn more about RapidILL and other resources to help elevate your library.