Tipasa release notes, June 2023
Release Date: June 30, 2023
Introduction
This release of Tipasa provides a number of new features and enhancements in addition to several bug fixes. The features and enhancements will help you manage more complex workflows, including:
- For off-system requests, automatically expire borrowing requests sent to partners and include partner institutions in automation-built lender strings
- For Resource Sharing for Groups, create group-level interlibrary loan reports in Analytics
Many of these enhancements are the direct result of your feedback.
Recommended actions
For this release, we recommend that you review the following checklists and complete the relevant tasks so that you can adjust your policies and workflows and train your staff. These checklists identify updates that we have determined as significant for most institutions. We encourage you to review all the items in the release notes to determine whether there are other items that might require additional action or follow up by your institution.
Administrative actions
These items require immediate action or decisions.
Action |
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For best performance, it's very important to clear your browser's cache before starting to work with Tipasa! |
Be sure to utilize Smart fulfillment functionality, including:
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Have your contact information or lending policies changed? If so, please make the appropriate updates in the OCLC Policies Directory. |
Follow-up actions
In an effort to keep your staff informed of new features and changes, you may also want to consider these items.
Action |
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Share these release notes with your colleagues. |
See the release notes for recent My Account installs to read about improvements to the user experience for submitting ILL requests and fixes that reduce the creation duplicate requests. |
Have you signed up for email alerts for News in the OCLC Community Center? This ensures that Tipasa release notes and events come straight to your inbox. |
New features and enhancements
For off-system requests, utilize improvements to creating and managing requests
Automatically expire borrowing requests sent to partners
Previously, all steps for managing off-system borrowing requests were manual. With this release, the system will automatically close off-system borrowing requests based on Need Before date or the Days To Respond - saving you time by eliminating the need to review dates and manually close requests.
If this has been reached... | These will automatically update... |
Need Before date |
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Days To Respond (8 days for copies and 16 days for loans) |
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Notes:
- This automatic closing applies to all off-system borrowing requests, including those already in your queue. We recommend that you check your off-system borrowing queue for any expired or unfilled request and notify the partner that the request has been closed and the item is no longer needed from them. You can use the "full request details" email or the newly available notification for Cancel (see section below, Send new automated notifications to partner institutions). Then, you may want to submit the request to another partner (by copying the request and extending the Need Before date) or change the fulfillment type to an ILL or purchase request.
- With an upcoming release, the system will use the Days To Respond that you have set for the partner institution in the Address Book - rather than the default 8 or 16 days.
For more information, see Off-system borrowing.
Include partner institutions in automation-built lender strings
OCLC symbols for off-system partner institutions can now be included in lender strings built by automation. To be used in an automation-built lender string:
- An OCLC symbol must be included for the partner institution in the Address Book.
- The partner institution's OCLC symbol must be included in a custom holdings group and path used by the automation.
- The partner institution must have holdings in WorldCat or automation must be able to search their catalog holdings via Z39.50.
Also:
- In the OCLC Policies Directory, the partner institution's OCLC Supplier status must be set to No.
- In Advanced Workflows, the use of off-system partners in lender strings must be enabled. This option will become available in mid-July 2023.
Finding or creating the partner institution's OCLC symbol
Even though your partner institution doesn't typically supply items on the OCLC network, they may have an OCLC symbol for other services such as cataloging. To determine if the institution already has an OCLC symbol, check the WorldCat Registry.
If the partner institution does not have an OCLC symbol, please submit a request to OCLC Support for a symbol to be created and for requestability to be configured via Z39.50.
Setting up your partner institution for use in automation-built lender strings
Once you know the OCLC symbol for your partner institution:
- Add the OCLC symbol to the partner record in the Address Book.
- Include the OCLC symbol in a custom holding group and path.
- Include that custom holding path in an automation (by using the Automated Request Manager).
- In the settings for Advanced Workflows, enable the use of off-system partners in lender strings. This option will become available in mid-July 2023.
Automated building of the lender string
When the request is submitted to automation, the system checks holdings for the symbols included in the custom holdings path and builds the lender string by applying the criteria you've specified for the automation.
As the request moves through the lender string, it automatically switches between ILL and off-system requesting depending on whether the institution is an ILL supplier or off-system partner. If OCLC Supplier status is Yes, the request is submitted to the lender as an ILL request. If the OCLC Supplier status is No, and the symbol has been configured correctly for off-system requesting, then the request is submitted as an off-system request.
For more information, see Off-system borrowing.
Send new automated notifications to partner institutions
Two new notifications are now available for you to configure in OCLC Service Configuration for manual or automated sending to off-system partners.
When you manually update an off-system request, you will need to manually send the notification. When the system automatically creates or cancels a request, the notification can be set to send automatically.
This notification... | Must be sent manually when... | Can be automated to send automatically when... |
Can you supply? | You manually create an off-system borrowing request. | A request is sent to an off-system partner via an automation-built lender string. |
Cancel | You manually cancel a request. | The Need Before date or Days To Respond has been reached. |
For more information, see Notifications.
Take advantage of user experience and performance enhancements
In OCLC Service Configuration, several enhancements have been made to the partner list in the Address Book.
- The Address Book now includes columns for the Alternate Name, Partner Symbol, and OCLC Symbol.
- The search box now searches Partner Name, Alternate Name, Partner Symbol, and OCLC Symbol.
- Pagination and additional sorting options have been added.
- The partner list now loads faster.
- The limit for active partners has been increased from 1,000 to 8,000.
In the staff interface, Partner Name and Partner Symbol lists now also load faster and spinners display while the lists are loading.
For more information, see Address Book and Off-system borrowing.
For Resource Sharing for Groups, create group-level interlibrary loan reports in Analytics
For administrators or staff with reporting responsibilities, group-level reports are now available, which include data for all Tipasa and WorldShare ILL institutions in the group.
Bug fixes and known issues
Open Access "View Now" links: Previously, long lists of links displayed in the staff interface (for example, on the holdings page and request details). Now, the number of links is limited to five. Additional future enhancements will help ensure the best Open Access links are surfaced.
Country field in borrowing requests: Previously, the country field defaulted to the United States. Now, the country defaults based on your institution's locale. You can now also remove the country and save the request with the country field as empty. And, you can save no value for country in constant data records.
IFM option when resubmitting an unfilled request: When you previously resubmitted an unfilled request, the system did not allow you to uncheck the Interlibrary Loan Fee Management (IFM) option. Now, when you resubmit an unfilled request and perhaps include different lenders, you can uncheck the IFM option if needed.
Field mapping for ISO 18626 request transfer: Previously, for borrowing requests received via ISO 18626 request transfer, XML data from some vendor systems for publication type and publication date was not handled correctly. Now, the publication type and publication data are mapped correctly for all supported systems.
For a full list of current and recently fixed issues, see Known issues.
Important links
Post-release sessions
To help you become familiar with the new features, enhancements, and improvements included in this release, please attend the upcoming webinar Product Insights: Resource Sharing.
Date: Tuesday, July 25, 2:00pm, Eastern Daylight Time (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC -04:00)
Registration: https://www.oclc.org/community/interlibrary_loan/events/rspi-july-2023.en.html
Please note the session time zones when registering. The sessions will be recorded and archived for future viewing on the OCLC Community Center. Please register, even if you cannot attend, to receive a link to the recorded session.
OCLC Resource Sharing Conference web series
OCLC invites you to view recordings and slides in the community center from the 2023 OCLC Resource Sharing Conference (RSC23) web series. The free, virtual session from RSC23 included:
- Some changes are here to stay: Managing resource sharing in the 21st century | Recording and slides
- RSC23 Lightning sessions - Conducting interlibrary loan user surveys and Training student employees on ILL processing | Recording and slides
- Law, not guidelines: Moving beyond CONTU | Recording and slides
- Exceed your library users’ expectations with your ILL services | Recording and slides
- Lightning sessions- Resource sharing: an Italian perspective, Resource share the love, and Resource sharing trends survey | Recording and slides
- Workshop - Tips to improve staff workflows and users’ experience | Recording and slides
Virtual Workshop Series: Learn how to fine-tune your ILL setup
The series included the following topics:
- Part 1: Fine-tune your policies and deflections (recording, slides, and checklist available)
- Part 2: Construct your custom holdings (recording, slides, and checklist available)
- Part 3: Automate your request process (recording, slides, and checklist available)
- Part 4: Curate and care for your constant data (recording, slides, and checklist available)
- Part 5: Make your usage statistics count (recording, slides, and checklist available)
Support websites
Support information for this product and related products can be found at: