IDS/GIST Introduction and Best Practices. Deciding if GIST is right for your ILL office. T. Jacob (Jake) Weiner – ILL Borrowing Supervisor George Mason University (VGM) 1

What is the IDS? The Information Delivery Services Project (IDS) is a group of libraries in New York state. Their goal is to create a community of libraries for all aspects of resource-sharing. They have looked at ILLiad and created a set of best practices, then moved on to create GIST for expanding ILLiad’s capabilities. They are kind of like VIVA. 2

The IDS Project Workflow Toolkit The toolkit contains many best practices and also contains many resources that can be immediately integrated into ILLiad like and printing templates. They keep abreast of developments surrounding ILLiad and also create some of those developments on their own. GIST is an outflow from the IDS Project when they figured out that ILLiad could be doing much more than just ILL. 3

What is GIST? Getting It System Toolkit (GIST) is an integrated system for acquisition and Interlibrary Loan. Locating and requesting items most efficiently. Integration of acquisition and Interlibrary Loan processes. Gift management. GIST is FREE! 4

What does integrated ILL and Acquisitions mean? There is more and more overlap between ILL and Acquisitions. ILL can help acquisitions determine patron needs. ILL can facilitate purchasing items on demand. Can ILL take on more of a role in acquisitions itself? GIST lets you pick and choose to best fit your organizational design. 5

What does the GIST work flow look like? An example GIST workflow. 6

Should ILL make Acquisitions decisions? Policy considerations before making purchases. How much integration does your department need to make purchases? What is the level of cooperation between ILL and Acquisitions at your institution? Do you need to improve communication between ILL and other departments? Can you help your Acquisitions department in collection development without purchasing? Parallel processes already exist for ILL and Acquisitions. You can now purchase ILL materials through IFM at some vendors, and many people already use document suppliers. 7

What should we know before we borrow? Should we be asking ourselves acquisition questions before we borrow? Is the item being requested a good fit for our library? Is the item being requested within our budget? Can the item being requested help to give direction to develop our collection? 8

What should we do before we borrow? What can we do to obtain an item before requesting a loan? Purchase on demand options? Some already use document delivery options, why not use them for books? Amazon, Book sellers, other options? Purchase on demand criteria? Need Cost Availability 9

What does the GIST website look like? An example GIST enabled web page. 10

Improved information for your patron GIST can supply much more information for the patron as they are making their request. Library Availability – Information is drawn directly from your WorldCat records. Google Books Preview – Immediate availability if your patrons prefer e-book options. Full Text options – Online Full Text options if they are available. Amazon.com Details – If your patrons would prefer to purchase their own copy of the item, or if they just want the additional information Amazon can provide. Purchasing options – Amazon and more. Feedback options – Since GIST is a relatively new system, patron input is important. 11

What does the GIST ILLiad client look like? An example GIST enabled ILLiad client. 12

Improved information for your staff GIST will transfer the same information to you from the request that the patron sees so you can make informed borrowing/purchasing decisions. Quickly see if the item is held locally or a free online source. Set up parameters for inclusion into purchasing decisions. Use custom queues to facilitate purchasing decisions and routing to inform patrons of purchasing decisions. 13

The GIST Gift Manager An example of the of the GIST Gift Manager interface. 14

Using Gift management to facilitate ILL Gift management gets very little attention from ILL when it can be incredibly useful. Often gifts are not tracked because they are low priority and space is a premium. Using the Gift management system will allow you to track Gifts and see if you actually have an item that your patron may need. Comprehensive gift management can massively improve turnaround time on ILL requests and save money. Gift manager can use the SKU barcode to pull information about the item. More cross-departmental communication may be necessary to use this. 15

The benefit of ILL making acquisition decisions ILL requested items are going to BE USED. A patron wants the item. One use is more than most items gained through the normal acquisitions process. There is also evidence that an item requested through ILL will be used more than once. Why aren’t we purchasing the item? There are already parallel processes between ILL and acquisitions. You can use IFM to purchase items from some book sellers. Document Delivery companies already serve the same function for articles. 16

Getting the bang for your buck from ILLiad GIST helps you get the most out of the cost of ILLiad. If you already have ILLiad, you can use GIST to expand your capabilities and workflow without spending another dollar. If you don’t have ILLiad yet, you can use GIST to justify the cost of implementing it. In the time of tightening budgets and cost cutting, GIST expands ILLiad to improve customer service and helps to utilize the resources that are currently being ignored. 17

Disclaimer George Mason University doesn’t use GIST… yet! Coming 8.1 implementation and other technical and departmental aspects have pushed it back. Working with other departments to establish cooperation and communication before implementation. Moving forward one step at a time. We would like to implement the GIST request webform on our ILLiad website first because we can do that without consulting anyone else (except IT). We will expand from there as we can show the benefits of other aspects of GIST to other departments (and when our IT staff gets some free time). 18

IDS and GIST information on the web - The IDS Project page for GIST. – The IDS Project wiki page for GIST. acquisitions-manager-preview-2011-illiad-conference/ - The 2011 ILLiad conference presentation for GIST. (This one is pretty advanced and for those that are already using GIST.) acquisitions-manager-preview-2011-illiad-conference/ All of the pictures of GIST come from these websites and permission was given to display them for this presentation. 19