Virginia's Academic Library Consortium

ILL Resources and Best Practices

• OCLC Codes for VIVA Libraries
   
• ILL Rights in VIVA's Contracts
   
• Helpful Resources for Newcomers to VIVA ILL
   
• VIVA Whole Ebook Lending Best Practices
   
• VIVA Best Practices for Electronic Articles
   
• VIVA ILL Shipping Information

VIVA Whole Ebook Interlibrary Loan Recommendations

Beginning in 2016, VIVA gained whole ebook lending rights with four publishers:  Brill, Oxford University Press, Taylor & Francis, and Wiley.  The language of the rights can be found on the ILL Rights page.  What follows are recommendations for putting this into practice, created by the Whole Ebook Lending Task Force.

Quick Summary of Product-Specific Recommendations:

General recommendations:

• All requests for the new ebook content should be treated as copy requests/articles.
  • Books should be coded using the vendor name and a note that it is an ebook, in a field you are not currently using. (e.g. Item Info field, or another undesignated field not being populated). This will allow total number of ebook loans to be disambiguated at the end of the year, while allowing for easy transmission of the pdf, whether a chapter, or whole ebook.
  • Do track these requests at the end of the year – in WorldShare this should be doable via the imprint field, in ILLiad, it will need to be in the above mentioned note field.
  • Ebook requests submitted as articles should arrive with a default copyright compliance (CCG/CCL).
  • Requests should also indicate if it is an ebook being requested, and not a print book.
• Ebook requests should be conditionalized so that when a patron requests a book, they know immediately that this is the ebook.
  • This will be particularly important to minimize charges, since patrons often want the physical book.
  • Conditional example: This is an ebook. Do you want the whole ebook or select chapters? We do not have a hard copy.
  • Loan requests which do not specify if an ebook is acceptable will be conditionalized when only the ebook is available.
• Make ILL license agreements about ILL easily accessible and understandable to the resource sharing staff.  Make ILL license agreements available at the title level.
• If the same title is from more than one source, provide separate license agreements with each source for resource sharing staff.
• Add holdings to WCKB (and ILL licensing agreements), OCLC, DOCLINE and RAPID, etc..
• All front and back end material must be downloaded in addition to the chapters (e.g., title page, appendix, bibliography, etc.) before supplying to borrower.
• The group recommends that all files be compressed before sending.
• The group recommends using Adobe Pro for both compression and stitching of pdfs. If AdobePro is not available at your institution, Smallpdf (http://smallpdf.com) is a free service that will allow you to merge and compress a file once per hour, and there is no limit on the file size or number of pages.  Upload the files to merge them, and then re-upload the merged file to compress it. 

ILL Borrowing Recommendations:

1. Consider how patrons will access the request form.
   • Most borrowing requests are submitted via a link resolver. 
   • The prepopulated form may not work well and patrons may have problems editing the request form.
2. Consider the request form to be used by patrons.
   • Use a modified version of the  Article request form to:
     • Eliminate the OCLC issues related to:
       • Due dates: ebooks will not have a due date.
       • Receiving: items do not need to be received as books.
       • Returning: no need to return items.
     • Allow for unmediated ILL borrowing through ILLiad Trusted Sender and other OCLC unmediated ILL features which will improve turnaround time and reduce borrowing staff workload.
     • Give patrons the option to indicate whether an ebook is acceptable.
3. When submitting the request to lender, use the appropriate OCLC record and indicate whether an electronic copy is acceptable.
4. Consider how patrons will be notified when the requested item is received.
   • For ILLiad users, make sure the appropriate identifying bibliographic information is sent. This may require editing the ILLiad notification template.
5. Consider how patrons will received the ebook.  Most libraries use Odyssey or Article Exchange to deliver materials.  Be consistent in your practice for delivering materials electronically to patrons.

ILL Lending Recommendations:

1. Know your rights, and refer to ILL licensing agreements with each title.  This is important when the same title is provided and/or held from more than one source.
2. Condition request when you are unable to determine if ebook is acceptable.
3. Condition request if an ebook is requested, but you only have a print copy.
4. Condition request if a print copy is requested, but you only have e-copy.
5. Condition duplicate requests.
6. Consider requests for more than one chapter from the same ebook.
   • When more than one chapter is being requested by the same institution as one request, send only the requested chapters if the chapters must be combined. This saves staff time.  If the ebook is available as a single PDF and all chapters are already combined, it may be OK to send the entire book. (To avoid patron confusion, it is always best to send exactly what is being requested, when possible.)
   • Fill each request separately when the lender receives separate requests for chapters in the same ebook from the same institution.
7. Compile chapters when the entire book is requested. This includes front matter, dedication, copyright, verso, introductions, table of contents, index, appendices, references, tables, etc.
8. Actual downloaded file size may vary from provider to provider, even if the provider supplies a stated file size that accompanies the search query. (For example, the T&F search result may say the ebook is 4.2 MB, but when downloaded, the actual size is 5.3 MB.)
9. Be aware of file size when downloading the whole book and when combining chapters. Use software such as Adobe Acrobat Pro that will combine and condense/compress file sizes when needed. Note: Any file larger than 17 MB may slow down delivery.
10. Switch requests from loans to copies to avoid issues with due dates, receipt and return.
11. Consider method of delivering items to borrowers:
    • Always deliver via secure methods (e.g., Odyssey, Electronic Delivery Utility [EDU, Odyssey Helper], Article Exchange, VCU FileLocker, etc.).
    • If the borrower and lender are ILLiad users, send via Odyssey whenever possible, as this is the most efficient method for the borrower to deliver to patron.
    • If only the borrower or lender is an ILLiad user, or if neither are, send via Article Exchange or some other secure method.

Product-Specific Recommendations:

Brill:

• All titles may be loaned.
• If a patron requests specific chapters from a book, the task force recommends departments just send the whole book, rather than spending time stitching together select chapters, since whole book pdf download is available.
• Compression is recommended to keep whole books between 4-7 megabytes.

OSO/UPSO:

• All titles may be loaned.
• Searching in quotation marks does not work well – search queries using quotation marks did not yield any results.  Search queries without quotation marks were successful in bringing up title results.
• You can only download a UPSO ebook chapter by chapter, so the lending library must also remember to download all front and back end material (e.g. the title page, appendix, bibliography, etc.). 
• Each chapter can and should be saved so the file name is the title of the chapter with a numeral in front of it. 
  • This is helpful when sorting the files to be merged, and if using Adobe Acrobat Pro, it will automatically generate bookmarks in the merged file based on the individual chapters.  This will help the patron quickly jump between the chapters. 
  • Pay very close attention to the chapter order when merging the file! Example of numerals that can be utilized in front of the section title(s) to keep them in order:
    • i, ii, iii… for the Front Matter
    • 1, 2, 3… for the Chapters
    • a, b, c… for the End Matter
• Always reduce/compress the file size before sending the file.

Taylor & Francis:

• All titles may be loaned, including available evidence-based titles for which we do not have perpetual access rights.
• Whole ebook download is the only option available. If a patron requests specific chapters from a book, the task force recommends departments just send the whole book, rather than spending time stitching together selected chapters.
• Compression is recommended to keep whole books between 4-7 megabytes.
• Downloads can potentially be slower than other providers.
  • Opening viewer to download is an unnecessary step.  Content can be downloaded from direct search query page.  
  • Download includes bookmarks so the patron can easily find content.
• T&F appears to have various ways in which content can be “shared,” but they appear to just send links.
• There is no need for ILL departments to make an account – there were no readily apparent advantages of doing so.

Wiley:

• Only perpetual access titles may be loaned for the VIVA Wiley collection. Available evidence-based titles may not be. When VIVA selects shared, perpetual access titles, anticipated to be done in 2018, VIVA custom KB collections for these purchases will be created with whole ebook ILL referenced in the title.
• Full book download as a PDF is available.
  • Clicking on the full book PDF downloads all chapters in your C:/download folder as a Zip file.
  • Chapters will need to be extracted from the Zip file and combined/stitched together before sending.
• Chapter download is also available.