Interview - Heather Brown - ILL

Interlibrary Loan at UNMC is currently in a process of transition. Having switched to Illiad for lending earlier in the spring, it was only this month that Illiad was instituted for borrowing. The transition was from a system known as QuickDOC. A journal article discussing this system, found in the Journal of the Medical Library Association, can be found online at:

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=164407

I won't rehash the system being replaced, but it will suffice to say that it was designed to interface with DOCLINE, the NLM's ILL system, but its most significant weakness was that it cannot be used with OCLC.

Interestingly enough, UNMC shares servers for Illiad with UNO as a "satellite library" saving both institutions money and letting UNMC have the machines hosted elsewhere. In that vein, one of the discussions was the problem that many hospital networks (and their libraries, by extension) have issues with opening ports for applications such as ARIEL. This concern grows from the tremendous security required to guarantee patient information under HIPAA.

We also had alot of discussion about funding the costs of ILL. The chancellor "covers" the cost of 50 free ILL's per year, but in actuality the funding provided is closer to 1 per year for every eligible user. Fortunately, about 85% of those eligible use less than 10 per year.

This was definitely one of the more interesting interviews I have had at UNMC; in that it caused me to really think about some of the future trends in providing library services. Heather noted that as journal subscriptions are cut in the serials reductions, ILL costs for borrowing and use increase. This combined with an overal trend towards "ILL" providing information for users regardless of its origin (such as document delivery for DE or rural rotations of med students) means that the face of ILL is rapidly changing.

Putting this in context of what I know about ILL in academic libraries in general, this is a trend that seems to be occurring across the board. With the general downturn in Circ stats and gate counts, it makes one wonder if ILL is not the new "Circ"? That is, the position of prominence that Circulation used to hold as the lynchpin of access. Does the change of information format, the reduction of serial subscriptions, and the expectations of our current users point to this?

As someone who has worked in and around Circulation for a long time, it is unnerving to think that the answer is yes, but I think it is.