Dear Ros,  Sorry not to reply earlier, its all about priorities!

           We use the ILL module of Sirsi Unicorn, & are just at the end of
our 2nd year. The first year was Hell, mainly because we only had one day of
totally inappropriate training by Sirsi, & then went 'live' So all our
blunders snowballed, as the staff & students tried to find their way round
the system, & we tried to sort them out, meanwhile making horrendous
mistakes along the way.  Learning 'on the job' might be effective in some
spheres, but we felt some proper dummy runs would have been helpful.

        However, those days are behind us, & we now find [although we moan
about it] that it copes pretty well with our needs. Upgrades are a bit
traumatic as they tend to upset the applecart for very little positive
change. ILLs  is an area where simplicity is the best policy, but computer
programmers don't understand this, they must give us all-singing all-dancing
systems.

     Users are now au fait [mostly] with placing their ILL requests on the
Web, though remembering to print off & send us copyright declarations still
trips them up. We do notify them by e-mail immediately, but often they don't
check their messages. It's amazing how many fail to chase up these un-sent
requests, as if they place them & forget them!

     We send all requests to BL first via Artel, so that they appear on the
records. We haven't yet discovered how to by-pass BL & go straight to any
other library, but we're working on it, maybe during this summer vac.

     It would be nice if there was some link between the catalogue holdings
& the ILL system, so that book requests were automatically rejected if in
stock, & the user knew immediately; I know it's only a matter of a few
seconds to hit buttons & check...then you have to email the user that we
have the book,  and as I said, checking email messages is something students
are not very good at.

   Hope this is what you need to know. Please phone us if you have specific
questions & we'll try to answer them.

  Regards, Maggie

ILL, Learning Centre
University of Gloucestershire
Park Campus
Cheltenham GL50 2QF
Tel. 01242 532843
e-mail= [log in to unmask]
BL Billing account customer code 87-0159


-----Original Message-----
From: M Ros Doig [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 04 June 2003 09:09
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: ILL modules again


Thank you to those half dozen who responded to my first message.
Three of those used the same LMS.
I can only conclude that not many of you are using the ILL modules of your
LMS.
If your LMS is one of the following and you are NOT using its ILL module a
brief email with details would be much appreciated.
Again I'd like to hear from users of
Dynix Horizon
SIRSI Unicorn
Innovative Millenium
Endeavour Voyager
TALIS

Please reply to me not to the list.
Thanks and best wishes to all
Ros


Ros Doig
Serials & Inter-lending Librarian
University of Derby
Learning Centre
Kedleston Road
Derby
DE22 1GB

Tel. +44 1332 591204
Fax. +44 1332 622773
Email M.R.Doig@Derby .ac.uk
.