OCLC delivery services: The library on-demand.

Editor's Notes

1. Regardless of context, participants want to get information instantly and effortlessly , thereby reporting convenience as a priority. This finding supports results from prior research from OCLC, in which participants at all age groups report convenience as the primary motivator in performing information searches. (Many Faces 32) Intuitive discovery. Convenience is king, queen and the whole court. Over and over we see that. Using something “just good enough” (satisficing) that can be gotten very quickly, easily and for free will outweigh possible “better” options that are more expensive in terms of time, money or mastery requirements. Inconvenience as expressed in difficulty of access was a repeated complaint against library OPACs in both projects. Undergraduate students participating in the Sense-Making project offered specific criticisms of the library catalog as difficult to use, though they claimed they will use online reserves from the library—after the library closes, a clear convenience choice. They and graduate students both frequently commented on how easy the Web is to use, especially in comparison to library systems. (Seeking Synchronicity 64 )   Intuitive discovery. Non-intuitive is a major complain for current users of library systems. In all our work addressing how people engage with technology and get their information, we have learned that convenience is a top reason for making decisions. 30 This is not a simple concept, though, since convenience is dependent upon the situation the individual is in at the time, the context, and the information need. As we previously discussed, individuals sometimes want face-to-face interactions and physical sources, and in other instances want digital interactions and sources. How people access the digital sources also varies. (Many Faces 47-48)
2. Discovery and Access Interview CBU10 S2 24:33 Okay. So going back to your survey, then. So you didn't know the exact item you wanted to borrow, read or download immediately. And then we had asked did you accomplish what you were hoping to do, and you said yes, you did accomplish what you were hoping to do. So I'd like to talk to you a little bit about how you felt about your search experience. And what are some words you might use? For instance, would you say you were delighted by your search experience? S3 25:23 Only because of [inaudible] paper research, I was really [inaudible] delighted. But the ease of using it was great. I didn't have to work too hard to find what I wanted. I just had to think about it, and make sure I was using the right word. It was really simple. I think that's the most important. So in that way, yes. It was very delightful to be able to not have to go through a lot of hoops to get to what I was looking for, because figuring out the topic is complicated enough.
3. New quote about unmediated access: library user. Full quote: MU03 Semi-Structured Interview (Fulfillment Project, MU03, Female, Age 45-54, Faculty Member, Social Sciences) MU03: Yes. The system they've got at the moment if I want to request a physical item is that they've just got the form online on the library website, and I can do that. That's really good. I'd like to get an email reminder about a week before it's due because I won't have that written down anywhere, so just to remind me that I need to return the item. For things like the inter-library loans, say, with electronic copies, I'm very happy to request that online using their online form and then just have the correspondence after by email is the most convenient for me.
4. ALIA Focus Group: (Fulfillment Project, ALIA Online Information Conference participant) Lynn: That's where I was going is, we're talking about some of the changes and you were saying you were going one way and then you were mediated then it became unmediated and now you're going back to mediated. My question is, how does this effect the faculty, the graduate students? Their expectations? You brought up another thing. The staff? Jim: I think there will always be a need for the unmediated for the difficult to find items. When there are 12 copies around the country in other libraries, that's a sort of thing with unmediated request works. It's the things that are difficult to find that then come through to the staff and they have to do the work from there to try and find the copy. There will always be a bit of each.
5. We have concentrated on identifying how people engage with technology and get their information  for both personal and academic situations. We have learned that the context and situation of the information need often dictate how people behave and engage with technology. These also influence how and why they select to use resources, usually discovered through a web browser and that include freely available resources, such as Wikipedia; human resources; and library resources. (Library in the Life of the User ii) Smart fulfillment. Library services should be able to understand and respond automatically to more elements of the context surrounding information seeking behaviors. An undergrad student looking for information about an author is going to need very different responses than a professor, even if the initial search parameters are the same.
6. We have concentrated on identifying how people engage with technology and get their information  for both personal and academic situations. We have learned that the context and situation of the information need often dictate how people behave and engage with technology. These also influence how and why they select to use resources, usually discovered through a web browser and that include freely available resources, such as Wikipedia; human resources; and library resources. (Library in the Life of the User ii) Smart fulfillment. Library services should be able to understand and respond automatically to more elements of the context surrounding information seeking behaviors. An undergrad student looking for information about an author is going to need very different responses than a professor, even if the initial search parameters are the same.
7. We have concentrated on identifying how people engage with technology and get their information  for both personal and academic situations. We have learned that the context and situation of the information need often dictate how people behave and engage with technology. These also influence how and why they select to use resources, usually discovered through a web browser and that include freely available resources, such as Wikipedia; human resources; and library resources. (Library in the Life of the User ii) Smart fulfillment. Library services should be able to understand and respond automatically to more elements of the context surrounding information seeking behaviors. An undergrad student looking for information about an author is going to need very different responses than a professor, even if the initial search parameters are the same.
8. Tracking of request quote: librarian. Full quote: ACRL Focus Group: (Fulfillment Project, ACRL 2019 Conference participant) Peter: But I just wanted to circle back to ... There was talk about tracking. There's no reason why we can't integrate tracking into our ILL systems whether you want the user to view it or not. I can see arguing that either way, but UPS and FedEx all have apis that could be easily integrated into those more easily. It's not ... It doesn't take a magic wand. Onus for making fulfillment seamless is on library staff, not users
9. MU01 Semi-Structured Interviews (Fulfillment Project, MU01, Female, Age 45-54, Faculty Member, Social Sciences) MU01: You mentioned other campuses, I have requested books from other campuses before, so I have done that here. [inaudible] library or when [inaudible] was open, so I did and it came. Just a little email, just like you would the modern way of shipping, you buy a product and then it's on its way, it's been shipped, it should be here this day. That'd be great. I'd be able to track it. I'd be like, oh, it's coming on Tuesday! To me that would be kinda fun, rather than you send it out there and you're like well, I don't know where they're sending it, I hope I get it.
10. Privacy of searches was not a concern for the majority of interviewees. Just two of the 14  interviewees mentioned a concern with the privacy of their searches. (Discovery and Access 12) Single account: While librarians often stress privacy issues, they aren’t always top of mind for users. Personalization means the ability to choose for users based on their preferences While all of the interviewees were satisfied with their search experience, not many agreed they were “delighted” by the experience. Eight of the 14 interviewees talked about being satisfied because they found what they were looking for, but they wouldn’t say that the search experience delighted them. Five of them were surprised that they actually found something. (Discovery and Access 12 ) Single account. There’s lots of room to delight users.
11. Privacy of searches was not a concern for the majority of interviewees. Just two of the 14  interviewees mentioned a concern with the privacy of their searches. (Discovery and Access 12) Single account: While librarians often stress privacy issues, they aren’t always top of mind for users. Personalization means the ability to choose for users based on their preferences While all of the interviewees were satisfied with their search experience, not many agreed they were “delighted” by the experience. Eight of the 14 interviewees talked about being satisfied because they found what they were looking for, but they wouldn’t say that the search experience delighted them. Five of them were surprised that they actually found something. (Discovery and Access 12 ) Single account. There’s lots of room to delight users.
12. Privacy of searches was not a concern for the majority of interviewees. Just two of the 14  interviewees mentioned a concern with the privacy of their searches. (Discovery and Access 12) Single account: While librarians often stress privacy issues, they aren’t always top of mind for users. Personalization means the ability to choose for users based on their preferences While all of the interviewees were satisfied with their search experience, not many agreed they were “delighted” by the experience. Eight of the 14 interviewees talked about being satisfied because they found what they were looking for, but they wouldn’t say that the search experience delighted them. Five of them were surprised that they actually found something. (Discovery and Access 12 ) Single account. There’s lots of room to delight users.
13. Librarians are good at establishing partnerships within the communities they serve, whether  that means faculty and students at a university or citizens within a geographic area. Establishing partnerships further afield, however, can be tricky. This is not to say that librarians don’t work well with others. They work especially well with other librarians for services, such as interlibrary loan, whose scope predates many retail industries’ ability to service widely dispersed customers. The ability of a student in Quebec to be able to access materials in Mexico City well before the arrival of the Internet is a testament to the power of library cooperation. (Reordering Ranganathan 77) Universal inventory: The ability for libraries to be “neutral” partners can’t be underestimated. They aren’t seeking to sell products or specific ideologies. That’s super rare. That makes them an excellent candidate to be universal hubs.
14. Librarians are good at establishing partnerships within the communities they serve, whether  that means faculty and students at a university or citizens within a geographic area. Establishing partnerships further afield, however, can be tricky. This is not to say that librarians don’t work well with others. They work especially well with other librarians for services, such as interlibrary loan, whose scope predates many retail industries’ ability to service widely dispersed customers. The ability of a student in Quebec to be able to access materials in Mexico City well before the arrival of the Internet is a testament to the power of library cooperation. (Reordering Ranganathan 77) Universal inventory: The ability for libraries to be “neutral” partners can’t be underestimated. They aren’t seeking to sell products or specific ideologies. That’s super rare. That makes them an excellent candidate to be universal hubs.
15. Librarians are good at establishing partnerships within the communities they serve, whether  that means faculty and students at a university or citizens within a geographic area. Establishing partnerships further afield, however, can be tricky. This is not to say that librarians don’t work well with others. They work especially well with other librarians for services, such as interlibrary loan, whose scope predates many retail industries’ ability to service widely dispersed customers. The ability of a student in Quebec to be able to access materials in Mexico City well before the arrival of the Internet is a testament to the power of library cooperation. (Reordering Ranganathan 77) Universal inventory: The ability for libraries to be “neutral” partners can’t be underestimated. They aren’t seeking to sell products or specific ideologies. That’s super rare. That makes them an excellent candidate to be universal hubs.
16. Jill is a student and is looking for ”Of Mice and Men”. She has to read it for her English Class.
17. We are developing new capabilities for WorldCat Discovery and Tipasa (OCLC’s cloud-based ILL management solution) that incorporate smart fulfillment preferences. These give libraries the ability to configure the best fulfillment option in any scenario based on format, library holding, shelf status, cost, and time to deliver. And users can make more informed choices up-front based on a predicted time to fill, the best fulfillment option for that item, and a next-best option (when the best option takes too long, is unlikely to be filled, or is cost prohibitive). We are also reviewing how best to provide guidance for patrons about what materials are available and how they can be accessed (link directly to full-text, borrow locally, purchase, request through ILL, etc). We’re also connecting all the systems provide this information about materials to the user.
18. We are developing new capabilities for WorldCat Discovery and Tipasa (OCLC’s cloud-based ILL management solution) that incorporate smart fulfillment preferences. These give libraries the ability to configure the best fulfillment option in any scenario based on format, library holding, shelf status, cost, and time to deliver. And users can make more informed choices up-front based on a predicted time to fill, the best fulfillment option for that item, and a next-best option (when the best option takes too long, is unlikely to be filled, or is cost prohibitive). We are also reviewing how best to provide guidance for patrons about what materials are available and how they can be accessed (link directly to full-text, borrow locally, purchase, request through ILL, etc). We’re also connecting all the systems provide this information about materials to the user.
19. OCLC already provides a single account feature for WorldShare Management Services (WMS) and Tipasa customers. We are currently working on additional ILS integrations for our interlibrary loan services, as well as bringing in Relais D2D (Discovery-to-Delivery for consortia) transactions to WMS. We are also exploring “you may also like” type suggestions based on borrowing history, academic majors or research focus areas, and other personalization in the single account interface. We recognize that libraries use a variety of vendors and need to be able to connect these vendors’ systems for the benefit of the user. We have chosen an API-first strategy to allow the data from OCLC systems to be accessed and displayed in whatever single account the library deems most appropriate for their users. And we see lots of opportunity for personalization options in this area. This will require additional conversations with our library members to understand the privacy considerations that may surround those options.
20. API-first strategy. In particular, we continue our work to support integration of Tipasa into other services through the use of APIs.
21. Today’s "on-demand" world is powered by information sharing. Crowd sourcing, social sharing, never-ending news cycles. There is the expectation of immediate, and complete, access to information, regardless of geography or language. Libraries must play a more important role than ever before, helping users navigate this sea of information.  Serving the end user and meeting their expectations is increasingly important for library leaders, as we have already discussed. Libraries are shifting from a content focus to a service focus. Library space is changing to enable collaboration, creativity and flexibility. And libraries are looking for ways to reduce the physical collection while maintaining access to those resources and delivering on user requests for all formats of information in a responsive and timely way.  And our customers around the world are already making changes to reflect those changes in how they think about and adjust their delivery of resource sharing/document delivery/interlibrary loan.