REQUEST M MANAGEM EMEN ENT: LEGAC ACY SYSTE TEMS MS, C , - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

REQUEST M MANAGEM EMEN ENT:

LEGAC ACY SYSTE TEMS MS, C , CONTIN TINUOUS I IMPROVEME MENT T AND ND NEXT XT-GE GEN D DAYDR DREAMS

Sar Sarah K Kas asten OVGTSL SL C Conference ce May y 15, 2 2018

The t he tea eam

■ ILLAS Request Fulfillment & Customer Service team: responsible for processing interlibrary borrowing requests in ILLiad and order requests for all library firm order acquisitions (all formats). ■ Merger of firm order acquisitions and ILL borrowing functions into one team in Summer 2015. ■ I started in May 2016, about a year after the merger of ILL & Acquisitions. – Background in acquisitions and serials (Aleph), immediately charmed by ILLiad and ILL work. ■ “Very comfortably” staffed to… less comfortably staffed: 5 team members from “merger” into summer 2017. Retirements were anticipated but no specific details until notice given. Two staff members retired in August and December 2017, down to three with no plans to refill the positions.

The w he work

■ Request volume, averages 700/week combined purchase orders (subject librarians) and ILL (ND students, faculty, staff); fairly regular ebbs and flows in volume throughout the year. ■ Acquisitions: Calendar year 2017: $3,029,318 spent on 13,520 individual orders. ■ ILL: 25,000-30,000 requests per year. About 8,000-10,000 filled unmediated. ■ Also: general customer service (patrons, subject librarians), claiming firm orders, acquisitions admin

The sys he systems

■ Aleph: early 1980s, adopted here early 2000s ■ ILLiad: 1997, adopted early/mid 2000s ■ Home-grown online order request form for subject librarians to submit purchase

• requests. No integration with other utilities. Most subject librarians use it regularly, if not

exclusively, for their firm order requests outside of vendor slip selection in Harrassowitz, Gobi, Casalini, AmaLivre. ■ ILL request management entirely handled within ILLiad. – Progressive queuing, status and flagging options – ILLiad community: add-ons & system integrations developed over the years to enhance ILLiad functionality. Primo, Gobi, Amazon, Google, Google Scholar, GIST, RapidILL, Get it Now, Internet Archive, ProQuest Dissertations and Thesis, OATD, etc. ■ Acquisitions processes largely ‘manual’ from the intake of requests, creating records in Aleph, to sending our orders to vendors. ■ Expectation to migrate to a new LMS and new ILL system in the next few years.

500 1000 1500 2000 2500 Jan-17 Feb-17 Mar-17 Apr-17 May-17 Jun-17 Jul-17 Aug-17 Sep-17 Oct-17 Nov-17 Dec-17 Jan-18 Feb-18 Mar-18

IL ILL L & Fir Firm O Order er V

• Vol. b

by Mont nth

ILL Monthly total Firm Order Monthly total

Social ial Sciences

Phone ne c calls Pap aper f forms Tel elep epathy ( (jk) k) Ra Rare p phon hone call ll, s , snail l ma mail o

• rder

er Au Auctions Ac Acquisitions Reques est t Manag agement nt

Humanit itie ies Sciences Special ial Colle lection

• ns

Special ializ ized d Branche hes

Order er R Requ ques est Fo Form

Onlin ine Sl Slip ip Select ction Ema mail Printouts ts Online ne Ve Vendor System Ecommer mmerce e (Amaz azon, n, specialized selle llers) rs) Ema mail Dir irectly 30+ S 30+ Subject Lib ibrar arians

Reserves, , Circulat atio ion

The Life of a SIMPLE Firm Order Request Export bib record to Aleph; or make stub record. ID copy for sale

• nline or contact

info for seller. Proceed with checkout on website; draft email to seller Request to the DONE/Discard pile Order Request Received in Team Email. Back to email for link provided on request Request email

• pened, printed,

archived Create order record in Aleph, data entry Duplicate check in Aleph

Team members reorganize the papers

• n their desks to

include the new requests.

Printouts sorted according to priority, format, subject librarian. Printouts handed

• ut to team

members. Search OCLC Connexion for bib record Add Aleph PO to

• rder, submit
• rder to seller.

Update order record with vendor info; update to SV 15 stages with multiple steps in web browser (email, seller sites), ILS, OCLC; re-searching in each application. Human routing, organization, prioritization of requests. Can eliminate some of the extra keying, searching, organizing work here.

Phone ne c calls Pap aper f forms Telepa path thy ( (jk jk) Ra Rare p phon hone call ll, s , snail l ma mail o

• rder

er Au Auctions Ac Acquisitions Reques est t Manag agement nt

(mu (multiple so sources & & systems) ms)

Humanit itie ies Social ial Sciences Sciences Special ial Colle lection

• ns

Special ializ ized d Branche hes

Order er R Requ ques est Fo Form

Onlin ine Sl Slip ip Select ction Ema mail Printouts ts Online ne Ve Vendor System Ecommer mmerce e (Amaz azon, n, specialized selle llers) rs) Ema mail Di Direc ect ILL R Reques est t Manag agement nt

(ILLi ILLiad-ba based)

ILL Patron

• ns (3,

(3,00 000- 4000 4000 per y year) ILLiad iad we web fo forms ILL R Reques ests ts RESOLVED

(Sent, C Cancele led, R Routed t to Doc c De Del, DD DDA, A, etc)

“Blended” Team w/o real integration

Reserves, , Circulat atio ion

Acquis uisitions itions r reque uest t manag nagement nt

■ Hard to “supervise.” – Who’s got which paper on their desk? – How many other papers do they have on their desk? – Did a request get lost in the traffic of our team email? – Did we order everything we were asked to? ■ Don’t have a way to directly compare workload of ILL requests (patrons are important!) with our acquisitions request volume (more patron-driven requests! collection purchasing is important too). ■ Tighter queue management can help make time for important non-transactional

• work. Workflow analysis, staff training/development, documentation….

■ How much we have to do vs. how much we did. Evaluating capacity vs. reporting

• productivity. A BIG RUNAROUND to get stats on order requests received vs. orders

placed.

Getti tting ng orde der reque uests ts into

• ILLi

ILLiad: WHY WHY

■ ILLiad as a ticketing system. – Progressive queueing to keep track of order status: waiting vendor confirmation, purchase order placed, pre-publication – ILLiad routing rules would self-sort order requests. Rush, Media, Special Collections, etc. Whatever is important to help staff stay organized. ■ Team would be able to see order request volume and ILL request volume in one place and (ideally) be able to allocate time better throughout the week. ■ Add-ons would help us develop some efficiencies in ordering process. Amazon, Gobi, Connexion, Google. Automated searching directly from ILLiad request. ■ Much easier to pull reports and statistics from ILLiad than Aleph on order requests.

Ra Rare p phon hone call ll, s , snail l ma mail o

• rder

er Au Auctions

Humanit itie ies

Social ial Sciences Sciences Special ial Colle lection

• ns

Special ializ ized d Branche hes

Ord rder Reques est t Form Onlin ine Sl Slip ip Select ction Online ne Ve Vendor Systems Ecommer mmerce e (Amaz azon, n, specialized selle llers) rs) Ema mail s sel ellers dir irectly ILL Reques ests ts S Sent, t, Cance celed, d, Routed t d to Do Doc Del Del, RESOLVED ILLiad iad Queu eues es Vendor Sit Sites ILL P Pat atrons ILLiad iad we web fo forms Reques est M t Managemen ement t

Reserves, , Circulat atio ion

Getti tting ng orde der reque uests ts into

• ILLi

ILLiad: H HOW

■ Idea #1. Manipulating ILLiad web forms. – Tinkered with it, but it lacked some features

• f the existing form.

– Not sure if I had the time/capacity to get 30+ subject librarians adapted to the new form. – Change management component & Short term solutions – looking at another change in 2 years. Minimizing change where it doesn’t add value.

New pa patron status f for Sele lectors; N rs; New Purchase se Request st f form rm o

• nly

ly visibl ble to this pa patron s status.

Getti tting ng orde der reque uests ts into

• ILLi

ILLiad: H HOW

■ Idea #2. ILLiad Email Import Function, use our existing order request form to deposit order requests in a dedicated email account. ILLiad importing requests with POP connection every 10 minutes.

• 1. E

Exis istin ing request f form

• 2. Ded

Dedicated ema email account

• 3. Reque

uests Que ueued i in n ILLiad iad via P ia POP

Has nice features for populating fund codes, cataloging locations, WorldCat API for bib data import.

Settin ings in in Cus ustom

• miz

izatio ion M n Manager

Order form fields mapped to ILLiad fields. Routing rules, custom queues, & custom email templates created to facilitate organizing requests and sending messages to vendors and subject librarians. Relabeling/hijacking ILLiad transaction table fields to accommodate acquisitions data (as well as ILL data)

Add-ons

• ns,

, Notif ific icatio ions, an , and d Queue ue V Vie iews

■ ILLiad Custom Queues created for acquisitions requests, organized by sys routing rules. Can edit ILLiad client settings to display queues in whatever order.

Add-ons, Notifications, and Queue Views

■ ILLiad add-ons: can do a good amount of searching and purchasing activity within the ILLiad client. Most add-ons are designed to auto-search titles and ISBNs to reduce searching/keying.

Add-ons

• ns,

, Notif ific icatio ions, an , and d Queue ue V Vie iews

■ ILLiad email notifications: can have established templates to send messages to vendors or send questions back to subject librarians. Correspondence recorded in the system and BCC’d our team email.

Request sts w s will ll route t to “Purchase se O Order P r Pla laced,” ,” “Awaiting V Ven endor R Res espo ponse,” e ” etc. c custom q queu eues depen epending o

• n the

e mes message s sen ent.

The Life of a SIMPLE Firm Order Request becomes more SIMPLE. Export bib record to Aleph; or make stub record. Use addons to find copy for sale

• nline

Proceed with checkout on website; email

• rder template.

Request closed, routed to Custom Queue Order Request Received in Team Email. Create order record in Aleph, data entry Duplicate check in Aleph

Team members monitor queues as they work for volume and high priority requests

Requests system sorted. Search OCLC Connexion for bib record Add Aleph PO to ILLiad record, submit order to seller. Update order record with vendor info; update to SV Can complete simple transactions within ILLiad and Aleph only. Only have to do a title search in Aleph for a duplication check. Obviously, this simple workflow won’t suit for all our orders, but it’ll help reduce small work and decisions that take time without adding value. 1 minutes saved per request @ 13,500 requests = ~28 workdays/year

Recomme mmend to a friend?

■ This exact set up? Probably not…. – Several weeks for OCLC and Atlas to help us resolve some issues with the Email Import function. Surprise, not widely used! – Some trouble with non-Roman characters and diacritics. – ILLiad/Request form data map makes my head spin a little. – A unique response to a specific situation/people/technical infrastructure. ■ Am I happy I did this work (and roped other people into it too)? Yep. – Good short term solution for the team: more efficient ordering process and better queue management when our staffing levels require us to think more carefully about how we’re spending our time. – Help us stay organized and productive with fewer staff members but with a lot

• f demands and shifting priorities; improve audit trail documentation.

Some i inspiration piration

■ System that has an embedded request management function! ■ System that can help us manage acquisitions communications ■ System can integrate with vendor systems, outside sources of information. Price comparisons, “buy or borrow?” axis, automatic searching and data population as you’re working among interfaces. ■ System as a platform flexible to librarians’ needs and creativity. ■ System allows easy, real time access to data. Canned reports, custom reports. Data from multiple functions can be sourced from the same place. ■ No system will be perfect though….

Some t e takea eaways…. ys….

■ Adopting Agile principles in our department: Thinking about “Requests Received”

• vs. “Work Done” in terms of staffing capacity and prioritization.

■ Helpful to see how other library operations and systems work in order to evaluate how your local practices work. Plug for blending historically disparate library functions. ■ Workflows are so heavily dependent on our tools that it’s impossible to think about

• ne without the other. Do our systems enable us to work they way we’d like or are

we conforming our work to our systems? Who’s winning? ■ Keep pushing on your workflows whether your systems are young or old. There’s probably a better way to do things and our business practices need to adapt if we’re going to accommodate emerging areas, as well as changes in the marketplace. ■ “Stop doing things”: doesn’t need to mean whole services, can mean small elements of workflows. Continue supporting “legacy” operations, and find ways to do them better.

Thanks nks for l r listening ning! Quest estions? s?