All Quiet on the Western Front. (For the moment)
If this were a movie, we’d be saying, “It’s quiet out there. Too quiet!” But we’re Librarians, and we like it when it’s quiet. Especially where iBorrow is concerned. Since the download of the latest build, Matt and I have been doing daily checks of the Mediate Loan and Fill Loan work spaces, looking for requests that have failed to age properly. There was one the very first week. Since then, none.
We’ve been keeping track of complaints that requests passed on to OCLC were failing. We’ve had maybe three, and Peter Fripp figured those out.
So, what we finally have is a borrower driven InterLibrary Loan tool that works. (And I can hear you muttering under your breath, “Well, it’s about time!” Amen to that!)
If we were dogs, we would go lie down in the grass, let our tongues loll out, and just enjoy this for a long time. But, we’re not. We’re the species with the opposable thumb and the low boredom threshold. And after about five minutes of satisfaction, we have to go out and poke something with a stick, just to see what will happen. So, what’s next for iBorrow?
Well, first, we’re waiting (tapping our feet and glancing impatiently at our watches the whole time) for SirsiDynix to ‘officially’ announce that URSA/iBorrow is a “core product” and that they will commit the resources needed to turn it into an ILL tool that makes you say “Wow!” rather than, “Well, I guess it does sorta work OK.” As soon as we get that word, we can start working with their Product Development team to implement the suggestions we’ve been putting in since Day One.
And we can start bringing more libraries into our current group of participants. With a little final fine tuning, we could bring Hernando, Citrus, and Collier in right away. Then we can move on to Polaris and the other systems we haven’t really worked with at all, yet. Progress there, of course, depends on cooperation from the engineering teams of those other vendors. We want SirsiDynix to make them an offer they can’t refuse.
Eternal optimists that we are, we have hopes that we will see this official announcement from SirsiDynix this week. When we do, we will share it with you while it is still warm and giving off that fresh baked bread smell.
Meanwhile, enjoy working with an ILL tool that, um, well… works!
–Al Carlson