LSRG Notes May 16 2011

Present: Joey Brown, Allison Demes, Chris Dunlap, Peter Erickson, Kelly Ledbetter, Samantha Lee, Rachael Miller, Rick Moore, Julia Sizek, Nick Stock, Nick Tarasen
From the Library: Judi Nadler (chair), Rachel Rosenberg, Jim Vaughan, John Kimbrough
Guests: Dave Borycz, Special Projects Librarian; David Larsen, Head of Access Services and Assessment.

Announcements

• Mansueto is open!
  • There's a blank Wikipedia page about Mansueto. The Library will provide content for it.
• We've had a few problems with people trying to climb the dome.
  • LSRG members said that students may not know climbing is dangerous, and that the glass isn't designed to support the weight of many people.
  • Tell people it's dangerous, that security cameras are in place, and that offenders will be arrested and subject to disciplinary procedures.
  • Will there be hedges or other landscaping to discourage climbing? (Yes, said Jim -- similar to what's around Max P.)
• Congratulations to Joey, who has served on LSRG since Spring 2009 and will be graduating this spring. We will be electronically bookplating a title in your honor.
• The University has a “Share your Library Memories” contest.

Followups to our last meeting

At our April 15 meeting, LSRG members inquired about:

• The Undergraduate Library Survey -- David L mentioned that the Library is still analyzing results. Comment coding is largely finished and the Library's Assessment Project Team is writing a summary report.
• Courtesy notices for recalls -- We'd like to send a notice right before a recall goes overdue, encouraging the borrower to return the item before fines are assessed. This is in our enhancement queue.
• Moratorium for recalls over winter break -- We hope uBorrow will address some of these problems.
• Student café -- it's increasingly likely this will be student-run. The Global Dining Initiative vendor (when selected) may provide food for the café, but staffing will be students.
  • Regardless of staffing, the café will have (limited) summer hours.

uBorrow (CIC Direct Consortial Borrowing)

(introduced by David Larsen)

We are partnering with the CIC-- the "Big Ten" universities plus Chicago -- to pilot uBorrow, a direct consortial borrowing program. We already process around 45% of our ILL requests via our CIC partners -- consortial borrowing will get books into the hands of readers more quickly and allow us to easily see where other copies might be available. We hope to reduce the number of recalls (currently 38,000/year) by offering this alternative service.

There is a new "uBorrow" interface, which David showed. Using Z39.50 protocols, we can search across all the CIC libraries and, for a given title, show which libraries own the title and have it available for borrowing.

• If we (Chicago) own the title and it's available, uBorrow will direct you to get our copy. 
• If our copy is checked out or we don't own the title, uBorrow will list other CIC libraries that have available copies.
• If no CIC library has an available copy, uBorrow will direct the user to ILL (so we can borrow from a non-CIC library).

When a user places a uBorrow request, we send the request via our existing ILL system to the lending library, who then ships the book to us.  All material will circulate on 12-week loan, similar to our existing quarter loans.

Discussion:

• Can we pick a specific lending library? (No, because we want to do some load balancing in the background. In any case, we're aiming for really quick delivery time, within 3 business days.)
• Will Lens/the catalog indicate if material is checked out via uBorrow? (No -- the book will show as "checked out" but not specifically to ILL.)
• What if we need our copy back? (We can either get another copy via uBorrow, or ask a non-CIC library to supply via ILL. Technically there is an option to recall a lent book, but in practice it's usually easier to obtain another copy.)
• Will U of C members have priority over "our" books? (Yes --)
  • If our book is on the shelf, it's first-come first-serve...but in practice a local user will almost always get to the book first, before the uBorrow paging staff (who have to generate pick lists, etc.)
  • If our book is checked out to one of our users, it won't be requestable in uBorrow.
  • If no copies are available in uBorrow, we send the request to ILL.
• How much does it cost to get a book via ILL? About a decade ago, it was $20/book. We normally charge other libraries to lend material (though not among the CIC). Systems like UBorrow really bring the processing costs down for us.

Scan & Deliver

David also introduced the Library's new Scan & Deliver service. In our 2010 graduate and 2011 undergraduate surveys, the #1 most requested new service was "scanning and online delivery of print journal articles." With Scan & Deliver, we will scan a journal article or book chapter from our stacks, and deliver to you via PDF on a secure website. The request mechanism would be via ILLiad, like interlibrary loan. The service would be free, and would probably take 4 business days. We would not scan materials electronically available (we'd point to the link instead), nor would we scan materials on reserve. We may also put in some throttles to manage demand, as we expect the service to be extremely popular.

Would LSRG members use this service? Any comments?

• One LSRG member suggested quotas: everyone gets X free requests (per quarter), and any additional requests get charged. (Although this has costs as well -- the invoicing and billing.)
  • We could also charge for "rush" service.
• Undergrads are used to getting materials right away, although we need to learn that materials aren't always immediately available.
• Does the Library keep the scanned copies? (No, said David, due to copyright issues.)
• I'd use this service, said an LSRG members, when I did not want an article immediately: e.g., I see an interesting reference and want to read it at some point.
• This seems like much less of a burden than paging a book and having the volume sit on a (hold or carrel) shelf.