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WorldShare Interlibrary Loan release notes, June 2023

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Release Date: June 30, 2023

Introduction

This release of WorldShare ILL 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:

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

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

If you haven't already, enable the OpenURL-based request form for your library's users:

  • 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 
  • Receive and process requests in WorldShare ILL – without having to rekey them
  • Automatically route requests submitted via the form to the automated request manager (ARM)

Libraries that use WorldShare Management Services (WMS) can use this new form as a more fully featured and customizable alternative to the WorldCat Discovery request form, which will be retired on July 31, 2023. If your library has not moved from the WorldCat Discovery form to the new WorldShare ILL form by that time, OCLC will automatically set up the new form for you.

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.
Have you signed up for email alerts for News in the OCLC Community Center? This ensures that WorldShare ILL release notes and events come straight to your inbox.

New features and enhancements

For off-system requests, utilize improvements to 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
  • Request status: Closed (Expired)
  • Reason for no (supplier history): Aged to Expired 
Days To Respond (8 days for copies and 16 days for loans)
  • Request status: Closed (Unfilled)
  • Reason for no (supplier history): Aged to Unfilled

Notes:

  • This automatic closing applies to all off-system borrowing requests, including those already in your queue. We recommend that you regularly monitor your off-system borrowing queue for expired or unfilled requests. You can use the "full request details" email to notify the partner that the request has been closed and the item is no longer needed from them. 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.

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 and Partner Symbol.​
  • The search box now searches Partner Name, Alternate Name, and Partner 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.

wsill address book.PNG

In the staff interface, Partner Name and Partner Symbol lists now also load faster and spinners display while the lists are loading.

off system spinner.PNG

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 no value. 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

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: