[Yulpub] University of Chicago comes into Borrow Direct (1 day early!)

[Crilly, Kendall]

Dear Public Services Colleagues,



We've just learned that the University of Chicago has been turned on as a Borrow Direct partner today, one day before the anticipated go-live date tomorrow. Testing with UChicago search results and materials has been going on in a test database for several weeks, and library users who search in the Borrow Direct catalog will now begin to see UChicago holdings mixed into their results. For the next few weeks, UChicago results will appear less frequently than other libraries, because the algorithm that balances requests among all the partners is set lower for them than the rest of us. We also took this approach when Harvard and MIT joined Borrow Direct, in order to guarantee that everything was working correctly. After several weeks at 50%, however, UChicago holdings will appear more regularly within search results.



This expansion of Borrow Direct, both outside the Ivy League and outside the Eastern Time Zone, may raise some questions among our users. Regarding the expansion of Borrow Direct, the University of Chicago is our second expansion beyond the 8 Ivies. As mentioned above, MIT came into Borrow Direct last year, flowing by a few months the example of their neighbor in Cambridge, Harvard.



By expanding the geographical coverage of Borrow Direct, we also run the risk of increasing the average amount of time that it takes to complete a request, as materials move between our libraries and Chicago. For the time being, we plan to continue using UPS ground shipping to and from Chicago, and over the next several weeks we will see how many (or if any) libraries stay within the average time of 4.06 days from the beginning of the user's request until it is received and checked in at the requesting library. (Our average for users here at Yale is actually 3.78 days.) If we find that some or all of the Borrow Direct partners, including Chicago, are unable to fill requests within that time, then we will have a discussion about possibly changing the delivery to UPS air or some other expedited shipping, assumedly by negotiating the lowest rates that we could get as a consortium. We really do not know right now what this will look like, and so I would ask anyone who is aware of inordinate delays, either our colleagues who process Borrow Direct requests or our users who are waiting for them, to please let Tom Bruno and I know about them. Tom is a member of the Borrow Direct Operations Group, and both Brad Warren and I are members of the Policy Group, where these discussions will take place once we have some experience and data to know how Chicago is affecting our turnaround times.



Amanda Patrick has prepared a news item about the expansion, including, I think, the nifty new Borrow Direct logo with all 10 shields in it, and I will ask her to send that out today, if possible, or tomorrow as she has been planning.



Please forward this information to anyone that you think should have it. And as always, if anyone has any questions or concerns, or needs any additional information, please do not hesitate to contact me.



With best wishes,



Ken Crilly

AUL, Program Development & Research

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