The Consolidation of Two Campus Interlibrary Loan Units Into One: A Partnership Between Law and Main Campus Valparaiso University From the SelectedWorks of Ruth S. Connell 2010 The Consolidation of Two Campus Interlibrary Loan Units Into One: A Partnership Between Law and Main Campus Ruth Sara Connell, Valparaiso University Available at: https://works.bepress.com/ruthconnell/1/ http://www.valpo.edu https://works.bepress.com/ruthconnell/ https://works.bepress.com/ruthconnell/1/ Connell: Page 1 of 27 The Consolidation of Two Campus Interlibrary Loan Units into One: A Partnership between Law and Main Campus Ruth Sara Connell Connell: Page 2 of 27 The Consolidation of Two Campus Interlibrary Loan Units into One: A Partnership between Law and Main Campus ABSTRACT. Until July 2009 Valparaiso University had two campus interlibrary loan units, one serving the main campus and the other serving the law school. In the wake of a projected 15-20% campus-wide budget cut, the two campus libraries investigated ways to work together to reduce costs. The libraries came together with OCLC and Atlas Systems, Inc., to consolidate the two separate units and ILLiad databases into one. This article discusses the reasons for merging two interlibrary loan units and the steps undertaken to combine two ILLiad systems. KEYWORDS. ILLiad, Interlibrary Loan, Law Libraries, Merger, Consolidation, Costs Ruth S. Connell is the Electronic Services Librarian and oversees the Interlibrary Loan Department at Valparaiso University’s Christopher Center for Library and Information Resources, 1410 Chapel Drive, Valparaiso, IN 46383 (E-mail: Ruth.Connell@valpo.edu). The author acknowledges Kevin Ford, Customer Support Manager at Atlas Systems, without whom the merger could never have taken place. The author also acknowledges David Smith of OCLC for his assistance with the LDAP conversion. Connell: Page 3 of 27 Background Valparaiso University is located in the city of Valparaiso, Indiana, a community of 30,000 in northwest Indiana, fifty-five miles from Chicago. Valparaiso University (Valpo) is a private comprehensive institution serving approximately 4,000 students. Most of the university’s seven colleges (arts and sciences, engineering, business, honors, nursing, and the graduate school) are served by Valparaiso’s main library, the Christopher Center for Library and Information Resources. The School of Law is served by its own library. The Christopher Center for Library and Information Resources is a four- story, 115,000 square foot building that opened in 2004. In addition to the library, the building also houses the public services arm of the campus Information Technology department (IT), although the library and IT are separately managed. The Christopher Center employs nine librarians, eleven support staff, 50 student assistants, and serves approximately 3,400 students. Comparatively, the law school library is 22,456 square feet and located within the School of Law building. The law library has six librarians, six support staff, 20 student assistants, and serves approximately 600 students. Each library is separately managed and has its own OCLC symbol. The two libraries share a catalog, but shared little else until 2009. Both libraries ran independent interlibrary loan departments. Literature Review The literature discussing merging of interlibrary loan (ILL) departments into other departments largely consists of single ILL departments being moved Connell: Page 4 of 27 under other administrative units, such as access services or reference. Although not the same as merging two separate ILL departments into one, there are many parallels that can be made between these two disparate types of consolidation. Tribble’s (1991) article discusses the merger of the Indiana State University (ISU) interlibrary loan unit of reference with the circulation department. The library merged two units into one in an effort to improve efficiency without hiring new staff. Tribble lists a number of factors to consider when merging operations. She suggests asking the question “Do two or more units perform like functions that can be accomplished more efficiently by one unit?” (p. 151) Another consideration should be whether the staff to be combined are compatible. Regular communication with staff members throughout the process is extremely important. Staff communication is a common theme in articles concerning mergers. Tribble credits some of the success of ISU’s merger to the open communication that helped relieve some of the uncertainty caused by the change. In their 2009 article, Alarid and Sullivan discuss the University of Denver Penrose Library’s 2006 merger of the Interlibrary Loan unit with Access Services. “As with any major organizational change, the challenge lies in the integration, readjustment, and refinement of communication and workflow procedures” (p. 222). Recently, Empire State College began offering interlibrary loan and document delivery to their patrons via a partnership with the University of Buffalo (Bertuca et al., 2009). The interlibrary loan hub is based within the University of Buffalo campus and Empire pays UB for the service. As these are two separate institutions, each has its own ILLiad client, but the interlibrary loan Connell: Page 5 of 27 department on the University of Buffalo’s campus has configured both clients to work on the same machines. Empire does not have one physical campus, and therefore does not have a physical library or collection. The University of Buffalo fills requests from their collection, and if an Empire patron requests a book not held in the Buffalo collection, the book is ordered through Alibris, and once returned by the patron, added into Buffalo’s collection. This project has proven popular with Empire faculty and students. An oft discussed topic in interlibrary loan literature is cost analysis. Many articles have been written on how to reduce interlibrary loan costs. Although the exact estimates vary, many studies have found that the most expensive interlibrary loan cost is labor. In Morris’ article (2004) entitled “How to Lower Your Interlibrary Loan and Document Delivery Costs: An Editorial”, he stated that labor costs are about 80% of total interlibrary loan costs. The same year (2004) a study by Jackson found that staff costs comprised 54% of borrowing costs and 73% of lending costs (p. 74). Both Morris and Jackson suggest looking at the level of staffing (librarian, support staff, or student workers) to see if labor costs can be reduced by altering what level of staff works on different procedures. An unknown for Christopher Center staff going into this conversation was how law patron expectations and needs differed from the rest of campus. In an article concerning law faculty services, Schilt (2007) commented that training faculty to use electronic resources was difficult. One of the librarians she surveyed commented that “faculty preferred to ask us to find things for them” (p. 193). She described the role of librarians. “Librarians dedicate time to discover and learn how to use each new resource; if the faculty took the time to do this, Connell: Page 6 of 27 they would never get anything to publication. Economy of effort suggests that they should rely on our expertise and dedicate their time to thinking and writing” (p. 198). This philosophy is contradictory to the Christopher Center’s approach to faculty support, which is to assist with training on databases, but not to perform the research on behalf of disciplinary faculty. Luckily, the type of hand- holding described in Schilt’s article is not practiced at the law library either. For the most part, Valparaiso law faculty members have student assistants to help them with their research and law librarians help train those students to use databases, but do not perform in-depth research for law faculty members. Had the law patron’s expectations for interlibrary loan been closer to those outlined in Schlit’s article, the prospect of consolidation would have been less palatable for the Christopher Center. Interlibrary Loan Operations: Pre-Consolidation If you accept that labor costs comprise a majority of the cost of an ILL operation, it follows that unmediated interlibrary loan costs will be lower than mediated interlibrary loan costs because they require less staff intervention. Jackson’s study (2004) found that not only are unmediated services more cost- effective, but they are also faster and provide a higher fill rate than mediated services (p. 98). Prior to the merger, the Christopher Center utilized two methods of unmediated borrowing that the law library did not. One of these was the ILLiad electronic delivery component of ILLiad called Odyssey, with the trusted sender setting turned on. Prior studies have shown this option reduces turnaround time and costs of article borrowing (Connell & Janke, 2006). The Connell: Page 7 of 27 other unmediated processing option in use at the Christopher Center was the Direct Request book borrowing feature of OCLC WorldCat Resource Sharing. When patrons place book requests and include an OCLC number or ISBN, and enough lenders are available within the state, those requests are sent directly to lenders without staff intervention. The Christopher Center uses the OCLC symbol IVU and the interlibrary loan department’s daily operation is run by the Interlibrary Loan Manager (ILLM), a full time position. The ILLM has several student assistants reporting to her working about 0.5 FTE. The ILLM reports to the Electronic Services Librarian who does not work in the interlibrary loan office on a daily basis except during the absence of the ILLM, but sets all procedures, maintains the ILLiad web pages, implements new technology, and handles other issues brought to her by the ILLM. In an informal survey conducted on the Interlibrary Loan listserv in 2002 regarding where the interlibrary loan unit resides within the library, the greatest number of respondents indicated it fell under Circulation or Access Services (Cheung, Patrick, Cameron, Bishop, & Fraser, 2003). The reason interlibrary loan at IVU is not housed in Access Services is historical. The ILLM position used to report to the Reference Services Librarian, but in 2005 there was a restructuring of library faculty positions and the Reference Services Librarian was tapped to fill the newly created Electronic Services Librarian position. Because she was the only librarian with interlibrary loan and ILLiad experience, the department moved with her. Connell: Page 8 of 27 Although the IVU interlibrary loan department has never been a part of the Access Services umbrella, Access Services staff does assist by scanning lending articles overnight so that they can be delivered in the morning. As shown in a study by a team of University of Arizona librarians, one of the main problems contributing to slow turnaround time was processing delays during evening and weekend hours (Voyles, Dols, & Knight, 2009). This is another area where the Christopher Center had a slight advantage over the law library because of a few hours of weekend student labor and evening scanning help from Access Services. The IVU interlibrary loan department uses ILLiad on a hosted OCLC server. It has its own contract for the statewide courier service and has been using both Ariel and Odyssey for electronic delivery of articles since 2005. During the July 2008 to June 2009 fiscal year, IVU received 8,028 borrowing requests and filled 6,626 (83%) (see Table 1). On the lending side, 6,166 requests were received and 4,369 (71%) were filled. Average borrowing turnaround time was 3.39 days for articles and 8.6 days for loans (see Table 2). Lending turnaround time was 13.89 hours for articles and 22.29 hours for loans. The law library uses the OCLC symbol IVZ and its interlibrary loan department’s daily operation was also run by a staff member with the title Interlibrary Loan Manager, but this was only a 0.5 FTE position. The IVZ manager had no student assistants and reported to the Cataloging Services Librarian. IVZ had its own separate hosted ILLiad subscription, its own statewide courier service contract, and its own Ariel license. IVZ was not using Odyssey. Connell: Page 9 of 27 During the 2008 to 2009 fiscal year, IVZ received 394 borrowing requests and filled 321 (81%) (see Table 1). During that same time period they received 1,237 lending requests and filled 588 (48%). Average borrowing turnaround time was 6.14 days for articles and 8.96 days for loans (see Table 2). For lending, turnaround time was 1.47 days for articles and 7.31 days for loans. Some of IVZ’s items are held in the Christopher Center’s Automated Storage and Retrieval System (ASRS) which contributed to increased lending turnaround time since those items had to be shipped across campus before IVZ could process them for delivery. Fiscal Challenge In 2008, all departments and colleges within Valparaiso University were charged with brainstorming scenarios to reduce costs by 15-20% because of predicted budget cuts. The leadership of the two campus libraries decided that one possible cost savings measure would be to combine the two interlibrary loan departments. Anticipated cost savings included moving from two ILLiad licenses, hosted servers, sets of staff, and state courier contracts to one. Because there were a number of logistical concerns, this proposal was vetted during an inquiry period starting in December 2008. The Christopher Center’s Electronic Services Librarian took the lead on this project and contacted OCLC to find out what costs would be involved with the merger, and to ask questions about how operations might be affected as a result of such a combination. Based on that initial consultation with OCLC, it was determined Connell: Page 10 of 27 that consolidation would be feasible. The libraries submitted their budget reduction proposals with the inclusion of the interlibrary loan consolidation. In April 2009, the libraries received word that their respective budgets had been cut based on the assumption that the interlibrary loan departments would be combined. At the same time, the Christopher Center lost one part time and four full time positions through voluntary and involuntary severance, and the law library eliminated one full time position. Although the consolidation of interlibrary loan departments was not mandated from above, if the libraries had chosen not to work together, they would have had to make cuts elsewhere to equal the cost savings the consolidation would provide, possibly resulting in further staff cuts. Consolidation Consideration In April 2009, the leadership of the two libraries met to discuss specific details of the proposal. The decision was made to retain both OCLC symbols. As the larger system, IVU would take over IVZ’s operation, almost like an outsourced operation. This method of consolidation negated the staff compatibility concern raised in other interlibrary loan mergers (Tribble, p. 151). Although there would not be any full time interlibrary loan staff at IVZ, a student assistant would be hired to work daily to pull lending requests; scanning article requests and putting loan requests in campus mail. On April 23rd, the Electronic Services Librarian received notification from IVU’s leadership to begin working with IVZ on the merger. She quickly scheduled a meeting to be held on April Connell: Page 11 of 27 30th for interested parties from the two interlibrary loan units to discuss the merger. In preparation for the initial meeting, the Electronic Services Librarian contacted OCLC to let them know about the consolidation, talk about changing authentication methods, and establish a general timeline and plan of action. It was assumed that when IVU took over IVZ’s operation, IVZ patrons would be entered as new users in IVU’s database, therefore losing their request history. During late April, an OCLC representative informed IVU’s Electronic Services Librarian of another option. For a fee, IVZ’s ILLiad database could be merged with IVU’s so that IVZ would not lose any data. Atlas Systems would have to perform this operation, and a quote was provided. Taking into consideration the authentication change and a database merger, the OCLC representative estimated an end-of-June initial target date. The day before the meeting, the Electronic Services Librarian e-mailed all of the proposed attendees from both libraries with the information about the database merger option so that everyone would have time to digest the information. Shortly thereafter, an IVZ representative e-mailed back that they had not yet decided whether they wanted to move ahead with the consolidation, so a discussion of database merger was premature. This revealed a miscommunication. IVU thought the purpose of the meeting was to discuss the impending consolidation of departments, while IVZ thought it was to discuss whether the consolidation was feasible. This miscommunication led the meeting in a different direction. Much of the meeting was devoted to addressing concerns from both sides, although logistics were still discussed. Connell: Page 12 of 27 Issues & Concerns Before the meeting, IVZ had given IVU access to their ILLiad reports, which revealed that in the previous year IVZ had filled as many requests (909) as an average month at IVU (10,995/12= 916.25). Because of the relatively small size of IVZ’s operation, IVU’s staff was comfortable assuming the extra volume, but remained concerned about issues such as transportation of items between campus libraries and separation of billing. Both libraries agreed that if the consolidation were accepted, campus mail would be used to transport items between buildings. The Electronic Services Librarian was sufficiently confident that ILLiad’s billing manager would be up to the task of handling separation of billing for IVU and IVZ. Overall, IVU staff felt that a consolidation of departments would require considerable time for initial setup, but once everything was in place, would not require much extra effort to maintain. IVZ also had a number of concerns that they addressed in the meeting. A major concern was that the consolidation would not save them much time if they were still expected to verify citations, gather and copy articles, and gather lending loans to mail to IVU. IVU responded that they could provide interlibrary loan assistance to IVZ patrons over the phone, via e-mail, or in person if patrons stopped by the Christopher Center. However, Christopher Center staff would not be able to provide on-site support within the law library. It was thought that based on the volume, a student assistant working within the law library could handle pulling loans and sending them via campus mail, as well as pulling articles to scan and deliver electronically. Connell: Page 13 of 27 In addition, the consolidation would save the time of IVZ staff because it would no longer be necessary to keep up on ILLiad upgrades and updates since the ILLiad software would no longer be used in that location. Because IVU would maintain the ILLiad web pages for IVZ, they could also upgrade IVZ to the most current ILLiad web interface. The prediction was that the consolidation would free the time of the 0.5 FTE Interlibrary Loan Manager to devote to other work within the law library. Another major concern for IVZ was the Valparaiso University Law Review. The editors of this journal use interlibrary loan services heavily and require special dispensation. They often require multiple renewals for loans, and also need an account that all law review staff members can share. IVU was considering switching authentication systems at the same time as the merger and could not address the shared account issue during the meeting, but later learned from OCLC that even with the new authentication system, such an account could be created. In addition, IVZ had a list of lenders they would not borrow books from for law review because those lenders did not allow multiple renewals. IVU agreed that if the merger went ahead, this list would be used to order books for the law review account. IVZ was also concerned about possible increased turnaround time for their patrons due to a suggestion to have all interlibrary loan deliveries go to IVU for processing and then be transported to IVZ via campus mail, which takes about a day. IVZ was still receiving many, and delivering all of their articles in print format, while IVU had moved almost exclusively to electronic delivery in 2004. If the consolidation went forward, IVU promised that all articles for both libraries Connell: Page 14 of 27 would be delivered electronically, eliminating the issue of campus mail for articles. The previous year IVU’s turnaround time for articles had been 2.75 days faster than IVZ’s, and IVU promised similar turnaround time for articles if the proposal were accepted (see Table 2). Regarding borrowing loans, IVU and IVZ’s turnaround times for the previous year were similar: 8.60 days versus 8.96 days respectively. The additional day required for campus mail would likely slow loan turnaround time a bit, but IVZ’s overall borrowing turnaround time when factoring in both loans and articles would decrease. In addition, IVU thought they could decrease IVZ’s lending turnaround time since IVZ was pulling many journals from their stacks to scan and deliver, when those articles were available electronically in PDF format through databases with licenses allowing for interlibrary loan lending. IVU offered that they could provide these other benefits to IVZ if the consolidation went forward: • Deliver loans via campus mail to the offices of IVZ faculty and staff (and accept return delivery the same way), so IVZ staff would not have to handle those items • Help train a student assistant to pull, scan, and send IVZ materials to IVU • Provide interlibrary loan statistics to IVZ as requested A concern of both libraries was that if an agreement were reached, that there would be sufficient time to complete the project early enough during the summer to allow for testing, trouble shooting, and familiarizing staff with new procedures before the fall semester began. Connell: Page 15 of 27 At the end of the meeting, it looked promising that the consolidation would go forward, but IVZ’s leadership did not give the green light to move ahead with the consolidation until almost two weeks later, on May 13th. Only at that time did the Electronic Services Librarian begin to work with OCLC on the technical aspects of the consolidation. LDAP Conversion Throughout the consolidation process, there were many setbacks, and one of the biggest frustrations was the LDAP conversion. During an initial conversation with OCLC, IVU inquired about switching from ILLiad authentication to Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) authentication. IVU had been considering LDAP authentication for several years as it was the authentication system used by the rest of campus and would allow patrons to log into ILLiad with the same username/password combination they used for all other campus systems. IVU had not proceeded with implementation because of complications LDAP would have had separating out law patrons; possibly causing more problems than it solved. With the merger, LDAP became an attractive possibility, especially once it was confirmed that even with LDAP authentication we could manually create non-LDAP ILLiad authentication accounts for the law review or proxy borrowers (ex. student assistants placing requests for professors). It was expected that once all the inputs were received from Valparaiso University’s Information Technology (IT) department and those were entered into the ILLiad Customization Manager, LDAP would work. In fact, the IT Connell: Page 16 of 27 department inadvertently provided one incorrect line of code which caused authentication to fail, and it took eight working days of back and forth between the Electronic Services Librarian, the campus IT department, and OCLC (including numerous hours on hold) to diagnose the problem. Once the code was fixed on June 11th, there was one other unanticipated issue with LDAP authentication. Earlier versions of ILLiad had assigned new registrants with the AuthType of Default. For those patrons, LDAP authentication worked seamlessly after the switch. Patrons who had registered after the library had upgraded to later versions of ILLiad had been assigned an AuthType of ILLiad, and therefore could login under their old username/password combination after the switchover but not their LDAP authorization. There were literally hundreds of patrons with the incorrect AuthType, so OCLC ran a rapid update on the patron database to switch everyone with the AuthType ILLiad to Default. The LDAP conversion took ten days to complete, approximately nine days longer than expected. Database Merger Meanwhile, on June 1st, IVZ’s leadership notified the Electronic Services Librarian that they wanted to pay the extra money for the database merger so their patrons’ history would not be lost. This message was immediately forwarded onto OCLC. On June 12th the Electronic Services Librarian contacted OCLC to ask for an update on this issue. After an investigation taking another five days, it was discovered that OCLC had failed to notify Atlas Systems that the Connell: Page 17 of 27 merger would take place. Once Atlas Systems was finally notified, they contacted the Electronic Services Librarian with information about moving ahead, but 16 days were lost due to communication issues. In order to begin the merger, Atlas Systems needed to take both libraries’ ILLiad systems down for a period of time, predicted to last half a day, in order to convert IVU’s database into a Shared Server ILLiad system and add an IVZ portion. At this initial stage, the IVZ portion of the Valparaiso shared server would be empty and not yet operational. On June 19th Atlas Systems and IVU worked together to find possible times for the initial shared server conversion and settled on June 30th or July 1st. Atlas Systems contacted OCLC to ask for administrative level access to IVU’s OCLC hosted server. Ten days later OCLC responded with a message to Atlas Systems saying security procedures had changed, and they could not provide Atlas Systems access. On July 1st, Atlas Systems e-mailed the Electronic Services Librarian to say that they were having “spirited discussions with the folks at OCLC”, but were working to move things along. Meanwhile, on July 1st, IVZ’s state courier contract ended, and so all law school items started to be delivered to IVU and then had to be shipped over to IVZ for processing before being delivered to patrons or reshelved. On that same day, IVZ’s ILLiad license expired, but OCLC agreed to extend their ILLiad service for no additional cost until the switchover could be completed. To review the timeline, in April OCLC had given IVU/IVZ an initial target date of “end of June.” Both libraries were hoping to have the conversion complete by early July in order to have plenty of time to train staff and overcome Connell: Page 18 of 27 unanticipated issues with the new procedures before the start of school in late August. Sixteen days had been lost in June due to communication issues between OCLC and Atlas Systems, and because of changes in security procedures, weeks were passing without any progress. Because of all of these delays, on July 7th Valpo gave OCLC and Atlas Systems a deadline of the end of July to complete the merge. If that deadline could not be met, the order to merge the databases would be cancelled. The libraries decided that it was more important to get IVZ up and running on the shared ILLiad server without their history than to have their history and not have enough time prior to the beginning of the fall semester. OCLC and Atlas Systems agreed to the July 31st deadline. On July 9th, OCLC notified IVU’s Electronic Services Librarian that IVZ needed to upgrade to ILLiad 7.4 (IVU was already on 7.4) before the first stage of the merger could take place; IVZ took the first possible upgrade slot on July 13th. After the upgrade the initial downtime for the shared server conversion could be scheduled and was set for July 17th. When the day of the shared server conversion arrived, both IVU and IVZ’s staff side operations were taken down while OCLC completed the process. The customer web pages were not taken down at this time. After three hours, OCLC notified both libraries that they should be up and running. Although IVZ’s system recovered successfully from this operation, IVU’s did not. OCLC and IVU tried to troubleshoot, but it was a Friday afternoon so vendor staffing was limited and the problem was not able to be solved before the weekend. On Monday morning, OCLC notified Atlas Systems that IVU’s system had been down since Connell: Page 19 of 27 Friday, and Atlas Systems responded immediately and made some changes that fixed the system. At that time, Atlas Systems also let the Electronic Services Librarian know that IVU’s ILLiad customer web pages URL had changed. This was the first time IVU was informed the URL would be changing. It required an update of multiple website links as well as changing all interlibrary loan OpenURL links in vendor databases. Both IVU and IVZ had been under the impression that they would share one set of web pages at a base Valpo URL, but OCLC and Atlas Systems set them up for two separate sets of web pages with /IVU and /IVZ extensions. It would have been possible for IVU and IVZ to share web pages at the IVU base URL, but this information was communicated to IVU after the URL conversion had already taken place and the work to switch all links over had already been completed. IVU already had a set of web pages that would suffice with very little modification. IVZ, however, was on the pre-7.0 interface and needed extensive customization. During the shared server conversion a copy of IVU’s pages had been placed in the IVZ web folder, so the Electronic Services Librarian modified the IVU pages to make them appropriate for IVZ. An example of a modification that was made for IVZ was the inclusion of an explanation of how to request items to be delivered to the law library as opposed to held for pickup within the Christopher Center. IVZ’s web pages were created in advance of the merger so that they would be ready to upload as soon as the merger was complete. The final merger of IVZ’s database into IVU’s was scheduled for July 30th; one day before the project completion deadline. As this would require downtime Connell: Page 20 of 27 of both the staff side and customer web pages, announcements were made to campus that ILLiad would be down for an undetermined portion of the day. In preparation for the merger, Atlas Systems ran a report to find usernames that were duplicated in IVU and IVZ’s databases. In all cases, these duplicate usernames identified individuals who had registered in both systems; there were no cases of different people signing up with the same username. In many cases, these were former undergraduates who had registered within IVU and then moved onto law school and registered with the same username within IVZ. Valparaiso also offers some dual degrees involving law and other graduate programs (ex. JD/MBA) which resulted in some of the duplicates. Atlas Systems sent this list to IVU and IVZ and asked them to identify with which location each student should be affiliated. IVU and IVZ worked through the list, sent the results to Atlas Systems, and Atlas Systems merged duplicate accounts and affiliated each person with the correct symbol. Once it began, the merger took Atlas Systems 4.3 hours after which Valpo was contacted to begin testing on staff side operations, which took another three hours. Once complete, Atlas Systems turned the customer web pages back on. The next step of testing was to make sure that all patrons could log into the combined system, and for IVU patrons, there were no problems. The Electronic Services Librarian had a previously gathered list of IVZ patrons who had agreed to help with testing. She contacted several of them and asked them to log in. None of them were able to log in successfully. After some back and forth with both OCLC and ILLiad, a relatively simple fix was discovered. The WebAuth key Connell: Page 21 of 27 in the Customization Manager on IVZ’s side of the server had defaulted to ILLiad and had to be switched to LDAP in order to work. We discovered minor problems with authentication, email, and copyright clearance but these were resolved with the assistance of Atlas Systems and OCLC. Finally, on July 30, 2009, the merger was complete, and after troubleshooting everything was fully functional a day later. Although there were plenty of problems along the way, Atlas Systems and OCLC were able to meet the end of July deadline. Conclusion While the combined Valparaiso University interlibrary loan department is still young, it appears to be a success. In the two month period following the consolidation, IVZ’s lending fill rate went up (for both articles and loans) and borrowing turnaround time dropped by approximately four days for articles. Borrowing turnaround time for loans is up slightly, but overall law patrons and other libraries borrowing from IVZ are benefiting from this merger. In terms of cost, the university will certainly save money on services, equipment, and more importantly, labor. Two months after the consolidation, the heaviest IVZ users (those with more than five requests) were asked for their feedback regarding the change. The feedback was largely positive. One person stated that “the electronic delivery of articles is a nice improvement.” Another wrote, “The experience has been excellent -- no problems at all with books or articles.” A third person wrote, “My experience with ILL has been both positive and negative.” This person had two Connell: Page 22 of 27 main complaints. The first had to do with cancelled requests for items held in the law library’s microfiche collection. Because of this comment, it was decided that in the future, requests for items held in the microfiche collection would not be cancelled, but submitted. The second complaint was regarding cancelled requests supposedly available online through Westlaw and Lexis databases. Because access to those two databases is restricted to the law community, the interlibrary loan department did not have access to verify that material that appeared to be available according to the OpenURL link resolver actually was available. Normally when patrons request articles that the link resolver says are available, the ILLM verifies the content actually is available before canceling those requests. This patron’s comments highlighted the need to be able to do this for law restricted databases, so the interlibrary loan staff asked for and received username/password access to law databases for the sole purpose of verifying content. A half-time Interlibrary Loan Manager staff position at law has been replaced by a student employee working about 11 hours a week. The Interlibrary Loan department is now receiving 10 hours a week of assistance from Access Services that it had not in the past, but that is due to a restructuring of Access Services, not the consolidation of IVZ into IVU. Even with the extra assistance from Access Services, fewer Valparaiso University non-student staff hours are being devoted to interlibrary loan than before the merge. IVZ’s labor costs have dropped significantly because the student employee retrieving items at IVZ earns considerably less than the staff member who used to do those tasks. It should be noted that IVZ’s Interlibrary Loan Manager did not lose employment during the Connell: Page 23 of 27 consolidation process; she was transferred to another department within the law library. As noted in the literature review, communication is an issue that appears frequently in articles regarding mergers, and communication was a major issue during this consolidation. Many people fear change, and with regular communication, some of these fears can be allayed. Some law library staff members in particular had many concerns going into this process, but through regular conversations those issues were successfully addressed. Though it was anticipated that communication between library staff members might be an issue, we did not anticipate that vendor communication would consume so much time and energy throughout this process. There were five distinct entities involved from beginning to end: IVU, IVZ, Valparaiso’s IT department, OCLC, and Atlas Systems. It proved a major challenge to receive timely responses from all interested parties. If other institutions are considering a similar consolidation, time delays of this nature should be factored into the schedule. Although this project required a considerable amount of staff time over the summer of 2009 for implementation, the expected long-term cost and efficiency savings made this project worthwhile. The labor savings will accrue yearly, as well as software savings from eliminating duplication with ILLiad and state courier savings with the elimination of one contract. It is impossible to say what would have happened had the consolidation not taken place, but it is likely that it prevented the loss of other positions during this period of retrenchment. With expected long-term decreases in law school turnaround time and increased fill Connell: Page 24 of 27 rate, this consolidation of two separate interlibrary loan departments into one was a resounding success. REFERENCES Alarid, T., & Sullivan, C. (2009). Welcome to the Neighborhood: The Merger of Interlibrary Loan with Access Services. Journal of Interlibrary Loan, Document Delivery & Electronic Reserve, 19(3), 219-225. Bertuca, C., Lelonek, C., Tuohy, R., Ortner, J., Bouvier, A., Dithomas, S., Hayes, S., Morehouse, S. (2009). Two ILLiad Clients, One Desktop, Purchase on Demand: Sharing a University's Collection, Staff, and Expertise. Journal of Access Services, 6(4), 497-512. Cheung, O., Patrick, S., Cameron, B., Bishop, E., & Fraser, L. (2003). Restructuring the Academic Library: Team-Based Management and the Merger of Interlibrary Loans with Circulation and Reserve. Journal of Interlibrary Loan, Document Delivery & Information Supply, 14(2), 5-17. Connell, R., & Janke, K. (2006). Turnaround Time Between ILLiad's Odyssey and Ariel Delivery Methods: A Comparison. Journal of Interlibrary Loan, Document Delivery & Electronic Reserve, 16(3), 41-55. Connell: Page 25 of 27 Jackson, M. (with Kingma, B., & Delaney, T.). (2004). Assessing ILL/DD Services: New Cost-Effective Alternatives. Washington, DC: Association of Research Libraries. Morris, L. (2004). How to Lower Your Interlibrary Loan and Document Delivery Costs: An Editorial. Journal of Interlibrary Loan, Document Delivery & Information Supply, 14(4), 1-3. Schilt, M. (2007). Faculty Services in the 21st Century: Evolution and Innovation. Legal Reference Services Quarterly, 26(1), 187-207. Tribble, J. (1991). Merging library operations. Library Administration & Management, 5(3), 151-154. Voyles, J., Dols, L., & Knight, E. (2009). Interlibrary Loan Meets Six Sigma: The University of Arizona Library's Success Applying Process Improvement. Journal of Interlibrary Loan, Document Delivery & Electronic Reserve, 19(1), 75-94. Connell: Page 26 of 27 Table 1 Requests Received and Filled during 2008-2009 Fiscal Year IVU IVZ Received Filled Received Filled Borrowing 8,028 6,626 394 321 Lending 6,166 4,369 1,237 588 Total 14,194 10,995 1,631 909 Connell: Page 27 of 27 Table 2 Turnaround Time for 2008-2009 Fiscal Year IVU IVZ Borrowing: articles 3.39 days 6.14 days Borrowing: loans 8.60 days 8.96 days Borrowing: overall 6.34 days 8.34 days Lending: articles 13.89 hours 1.47 days Lending: loans 22.29 hours 7.31 days Lending: overall 18.70 hours 5.14 days Valparaiso University From the SelectedWorks of Ruth S. Connell 2010 The Consolidation of Two Campus Interlibrary Loan Units Into One: A Partnership Between Law and Main Campus Microsoft Word - 373525-convertdoc.input.362058.YhYKw.doc