Replacing legacy ILL systems with a consolidated solution
Florida Gulf Coast University (FGCU), located in Fort Myers, serves more than 15,000 students. To support their academic endeavors, the university library maintains a collection of about 200,000 physical items and almost 400 electronic databases that hold millions of sources including articles, eBooks, and videos.
One system for all interlibrary loan requests
FGCU had multiple borrowing systems in place. They wanted to consolidate them to make the process more streamlined for staff and friendlier for library users. But there was an obstacle to overcome, as Glatthaar explains:
“Resource-sharing is one of our most heavily utilized services – we were processing on average 4,500 ILL requests per year, supporting scholarly research for our faculty, staff, and students. Having one place that allows them to place requests and for the library to process them was a major motivation for us. But naturally, there were concerns with changing a service that has an important place at FGCU.”Glatthaar goes on to add: “One of the challenges we experienced having two systems was in how to direct users to only use one place for requesting the items they needed. Up to that point, the configuration was requiring users to log into different systems. We stopped using ILLiad this past fall.
Now, all requests flow through one place, and Rapido, integrated with Alma, determines who fills each request. This part is more automated than we have ever had. It is truly more efficient and faster for our patrons who get what they need in record time.”
Quick adoption by staff and users
After implementing the change, the concerns disappeared. For the staff, the interface based on Alma proved intuitive. The library users also adopted it quickly and were placing and tracking all their requests within Rapido in no time. The library successfully dropped their legacy ILLiad service and is planning to drop OCLC Worldshare as well, since Rapido is able to source all of the requests. According to Chrissy Masillo, Library Information Systems Analyst II: “I like how automated this system is. Our staff used to have to heavily mediate any request that came in; with Rapido there has been less staff mediation on requests. From a user perspective, all the requests are in one place in their library card, instead of having to log in to two systems to review them.”
Greater ILL volume, less staff workload
Based on six months of data with Rapido in place, the library is projecting an annualized 33% increase in ILL requests, from 4,500 to 6,000. With less need for mediation, the library is handling the increase while decreasing staff workload. As Glatthaar reports, the increases may continue as more Alma libraries come on board: “Our circulation volume has increased in Rapido mainly because users are placing their requests in Primo, in one system that includes local, statewide, and Rapido libraries. Hopefully, more libraries will adopt Rapido and peer-to-peer sharing with other Alma libraries. Peer-to-peer is important as we begin to replace our Worldshare/OCLC products.”
Request turnaround time substantially reduced
The library is not only seeing more requests but is fulfilling those requests faster and putting resources into the hands of users sooner. The previous average turnaround for physical, returnable items was 10 days. It is now 6.8 days with Rapido, while the average for nonreturnable e-resources is now 21 hours. As Glatthar shares: “When titles are filled by other Rapido libraries, turnaround is now a week or less and we’re turning e-resources around in less than a day. The average turnaround time for returnables and non-returnables together is 3.7 days from the time the item is requested to when the item arrives.”
Predictable, low pricing with no per-item fees
As opposed to the previous fee model that included a software licensing fee and IFM charges for each item sourced, Rapido is based on an annual subscription that includes the software and unlimited access to the shared collection. As a result, the savings per item has been substantial, according to Glatthar: “We have seen a reduction in price per item. Since Rapido’s pricing is not based on IFM charges, our IFM monthly charges for borrowing are almost non-existent now.”
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