Mike Richins, Director of Product Management — RapidILL, Ex Libris

In these special times it is heartwarming to see how much impact communities have, and how we can all make a difference — even with a single gesture.

That is why the first thing that I want to do is thank every single member of staff in the RapidILL community of libraries that stepped up and made their resources available for libraries in need!

On March 25th, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on education, Ex Libris launched the COVID-19 RapidILL pod. This innovative library resource sharing initiative enabled non-RapidILL libraries to access critical scholarly articles and chapters electronically from existing RapidILL members, free of charge. The pod facilitated seamless interlibrary loan during a time of remote learning and research, demonstrating the power of collaboration in times of need.

We created a short movie to show you the amazing outcome of this initiative and the overwhelming feedback we received from the borrowers.

We keep getting great feedback from borrowers. We’ll create a follow-up blog post with new feedback in the coming weeks!

This initiative was created to support libraries so that they can continue to fulfill students’ requests even when the physical doors of the library were closed.

The RapidILL community of libraries stepped up in great numbers and agreed to make their  available library resources more widely and quickly available, to be shared with their colleagues all around the world.

The full list of lenders that opted in to help can be found in the Current Members section of the Rapid Home Page: https://rapid.exlibrisgroup.com/ by expanding the view of the COVID-19 pod.

I’m proud that I’m part of this wonderful community.

Yours,

Mike Richins and the entire Ex Libris family