About the University of Huddersfield:

The University of Huddersfield offers higher education programs to over 20,000 students. The campus has access to some of the best facilities in the country, and the University has won multiple awards for research and teaching excellence, including 20 National Teaching Fellowships and a Gold Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework award. The University also has a growing reputation for enterprise, with awards such as the Queen’s Award for Enterprise: International Trade.

The Library at the University of Huddersfield is converged with Computing Services; it has 164 employees consisting of 90 computing staff and 74 library staff. The Library has one physical location on campus, with limited 24/7 opening hours during exam periods. The service also manages two computer rooms that remain open on a 24/7 basis throughout the year. The Library uses ALMA as its integrated library system, Summon as its resource discovery tool, Bibliotheca for its self-checkout units, and Advanova for its controlled access system. Resource-sharing requests are processed by six Library Assistants within the Customer Services Team, who also staff the Library Help Desk and support the library’s circulation function.

Overcoming infrastructure barriers

The Library previously used a standalone resource-sharing system and most requests were directed to the British Library as the first source of supply.

Prior to joining RapidILL, the Library’s holdings were not exposed in any collective catalogues, and as a result, not many people were aware of the University of Huddersfield Library’s catalogue. However, just before the pandemic, the service joined Jisc Library Hub Discover, which exposed their holdings to the resource sharing community and led to a significant increase in requests from other libraries.

The Library faced a significant challenge when national negotiations with a major European content provider looked set to falter. At that point, the Library’s system infrastructure and processes would have struggled to handle any increase in ILL requests, prompting them to search for an alternative solution. RapidILL was recommended to them as a highly beneficial option for enhancing the Library’s ILL service to meet potential demand if that deal fell through.

Becoming more resilient to a growth in demand

After joining RapidILL, the interlibrary loan system by Ex Libris, part of Clarivate, the library workflows improved significantly. Alma Resource Sharing and RapidILL were configured so that the requests for articles and book chapters automatically get routed to RapidILL.

The integration of RapidILL with Alma has led to ILL forms being automatically propagated to the resource-sharing system. Users can request material not held by the Library directly from the discovery layer, without needing to manually complete an ILL form. “Moving to RapidILL made the process more seamless than it was before. Now, we get Alma to prepopulate the form for us,” says Chris, Customer Services Librarian at the University of Huddersfield. Also, RapidILL has turned out to be a potential automated mitigating service against the danger of losing the titles provided by major content providers.

Increasing user satisfaction to boost sustainable habits

The Library staff was initially skeptical that the service could increase demand for resource-sharing, but after reviewing the statistics, it is clear that the improved service has led to an increase in resource-sharing adoption. It is becoming more of an instinctive reaction for users to send a request for lending from other libraries.

Since the very first days of implementation, users have commented on the quick service and how they can now get articles and chapters within a matter of hours.

Thanks to the 24/7 availability and shorter turnaround times of RapidILL’s resource-sharing service, users can now submit requests at any time without the need for staff intervention. This has led to the formation of a new habit, where users turn to borrowing as their first port of call when they don’t find an item in the Library. This new trend allows the service to save money on items that would otherwise need to be purchased. What’s more, RapidILL’s annual subscription model allows Library Services to offer the service to users without worrying about transaction fees associated with document delivery services. The shift in model enables Chris to predict positive ROI after 6 months of use only.

The Library has improved the automation of its workflows so much that the staff would now, according to Chris, “get a tirade of complaints if [RapidILL] was withdrawn. [Users] just take it for granted.”