WorldShare Interlibrary Loan release notes, August 2020

Administrative actions

These items require immediate action or decisions.

Follow-up actions

In an effort to keep your staff informed of new features and changes, you may also want to consider these items.

Include Request ID with problem reports 

When reporting an issue with WorldShare Interlibrary Loan, it's very helpful to include the Request ID. Including this information allows us to directly trace what happened on the request we are troubleshooting.

Process requests more quickly using real-time availability and the new auto-no feature 

If your library subscribes to WorldCat Discovery with availability, you'll no longer see lending requests for items that aren't available. Based on real-time availability configured in WorldCat Discovery, the system will now automatically say No to requests that have an OPAC status of unavailable and requests will move through the lender string faster. (If the OPAC status of the item is anything other than unavailable, or if the OPAC status cannot be returned, the automatic Reason for No will not be applied.)

This also results in a new reason for saying no: No - System checked availability. (Note: This Reason for No is not available for manual selection, but it will appear in the OCLC Usage Statistics, Report Designer, and Request History.)

As a borrower, you may see this Reason for No if the request is sent to a WorldShare ILL or Tipasa library that is utilizing availability and the item status is unavailable. This will help the request move through the lender string faster because these lenders won't have to manually process the request. 

Utilize more time to process requests in problem statuses 

Because many libraries remain closed or library users have not returned to campus, some ILL staff have been unable to send back borrowed items or process returned materials. So, you and your ILL team are likely seeing increases in requests that are in "problem statuses":

• RECEIVED? – Borrowing library has not yet indicated that a shipped item has been received
• NOT RECEIVED – Borrowing library has indicated that a shipped item was not received
• RECEIVED BUT MISSING – Borrowing library received the item but the patron indicates it’s been lost
• OVERDUE – Borrowing library has not returned an item that is 14 or more days beyond the lender’s due date
• RETURNED/COMPLETE? – Lending library has not yet indicated that a returned item has been completed
• RETURNED BUT MISSING – Lending library has indicated that a returned item was not received (is missing)

Prior to August 5, requests in problem statuses were moved ("aged") to CLOSED after 180 days. This aging period has now been extended to 365 days.

This extra time will allow you to update requests without the worry that some requests will be moved to CLOSED before they can be updated correctly. The extended aging period will apply to all requests that were in problem statuses on August 5 as well as any requests in those statuses in the future. 

To ensure the ILL system is updated properly, you may want to check your problem-status queues for items that are indeed back on the shelf but perhaps did not get checked in through ILL for some reason.

For more information, see Request aging.

Use the CCOV profiled group to find lenders that are filling requests for physical materials 

You can now also use the new CCOV group to build lender strings of libraries that are able to ship and receive materials from their physical collections during the COVID-19 crisis.

• ACOV: Libraries supplying electronic documents during the COVID-19 crisis
• BCOV: Libraries supplying e-books during the COVID-19 crisis
• CCOV: Libraries supplying physical collection during COVID-19 crisis

The groups are updated weekly, and a that lists the OCLC symbols for each group (as well as the libraries that also participate in LVIS) is posted here.

The new CCOV group was built from the Physical ILL Return and Lending Status map based on libraries that have reported being open to receive and ship physical items.

• To check the status of your library and other libraries, go to the map.
• To update the status of your library, go to oc.lc/mailform.

The ACOV and BCOV lists are based on the status submitted for your library with this form, and you can use this same form to update your status.

As a reminder, you can use the profiled groups to build lender strings.

• When viewing a list of holding libraries in WorldShare ILL, Tipasa, or ILLiad, filter by Profiled Group (e.g., CCOV).
• In the OCLC Policies Directory, search by Group Symbol (e.g., CCOV) to identify a list of symbols in the group and copy/paste them into a Custom Holdings Group that you maintain.

For more information on how to make best use of these profiled groups, view this video tutorial.