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WorldShare Interlibrary Loan release notes, December 2023

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Release Date: December 17, 2023

Introduction

This release of WorldShare ILL provides new features and enhancements to help you manage more complex workflows, including:

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 of 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

For best performance, it's very important to clear your browser's cache before starting to work with WorldShare ILL.

Be sure to offer the new OpenURL-based WorldShare ILL request form for your library's users! It allow you to:

  • Configure and customize the elements of the form to meet your library's needs 
  • Utilize OCLC/WMS identity management or IP authorization
  • Provide access to the form from any discovery service or database
  • Receive and process requests in WorldShare ILL without having to rekey them - the bibliographic data is prefilled
  • Automatically route requests submitted via the form to the automated request manager (ARM)

For more information, see the WorldShare ILL release notes, May 2023.

Be sure to utilize Smart fulfillment functionality, including:
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

Share these release notes with your colleagues.

If you haven't already, visit the new OCLC Community Center for new ways to connect with OCLC and other community members.

To make the most of the new community structure: 

  1. Use your existing Community Center account to sign in. Just click “Sign in” in the upper right corner of the screen. All accounts and subscriptions have been migrated, so when you sign in, you will have access to all your existing posts and continue receiving notifications. 
  2. Read and agree to the Code of Conduct and Terms of Use. As part of launch, you will be prompted the first time you sign in to read and agree to the new OCLC Online Engagement Code of Conduct and Terms of Use.
  3. Visit the WorldShare ILL product community and click Manage subscriptions. We recommend that you subscribe to all boards to be notified of updates in all spaces – new options include Events, Recordings, and Ideas. 
  4. Visit the new Resource Sharing knowledge community and click Manage subscriptions. We recommend that you subscribe to all boards in this space also to be notified of updates – including newly scheduled Product Insights sessions and general resource sharing news.

New features and enhancements

Use the Resource Sharing Request API to extend your library's ability to create and retrieve requests

The Resource Sharing Request API is now available for use by your library's staff to offer custom interfaces that include the following features:

  • Create requests that are processed by automation, put in review, or sent directly to lenders.
  • Search requests based on a patron identifier to provide your patron with their outstanding requests.
  • Get full details of individual requests such as bibliographic information, status, and much more.

For more information, view the recording of Product Insights: OCLC APIs, October 2023. (The Resource Sharing Request API section begins at the 15:00 time stamp.)

Also, please visit the short URL oc.lc/rs-apis.

Utilize ILLiad's Connection Manager improvements to gain full Automated Request Manager borrowing functionality

For libraries using ILLiad 

With the 9.2.4 version of Connection Manager, you can now set up automations that will route borrowing requests to review with the lender string already built.

By specifying match criteria such as patron notes or patron department, and combining them with specific routing rules, you are now able to send requests through a series of automations customized your library's needs. You can also specify points in the workflow when the request needs to pause for a staff person to make a decision or take an action.

These improvements allow ILLiad libraries to take full advantage of automation-built lender strings and other Automated Request Manager functionality, helping to streamline workflows and save staff time.

For more information, please see Atlas Systems' documentation: Automated Request Manager - Enhancing ARM Workflows Using the ARMMatchField Customization Key

Bug fixes and known issues

For a full list of current and recently fixed issues, see Known issues.

Important links

Post-release session

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: Wednesday, January 31, 2:00 pm, Eastern Standard Time (UTC -05:00)
Registration: https://community.oclc.org/t5/resource-sharing-events/product-insights-resource-sharing/ec-p/49417#M7

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 

The 2024 OCLC Resource Sharing Conference (RSC24) web series will begin in March 2024, and the program committee is currently accepting presentation proposals. Please watch the news in the coming weeks for the agenda and registration.

Recordings and slides from the 2023 OCLC Resource Sharing Conference (RSC23) web series are available in the community center. The free, virtual sessions 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

Also, ILL 101 sessions hosted by IDS Project are available at the Online Learning Institute.

Virtual Workshop Series: Learn how to fine-tune your ILL setup

Were you able to join us for all of our Virtual Workshops where we showed how you can optimize your library’s ILL setup and workflows, and save time?

The series included the following topics: 

Support websites 

Support information for this product and related products can be found at: