TO ALL CENTRAL TEXAS LIBRARY INTERLIBRARY LOAN STAFF
I will be out of the office from May 15 through May 27th. Debbie Schneekloth will be the Library Assistant in charge of all interlibrary loan operations. Please forward all phone calls concerns or problems to Debbie at 512-974-7381 or you may call the 1-800-2421880. Many of you already speak to Debbie each day as she manages the ILL status and renewal phone line. You may also email Debbie at [email protected]. System challenges This has been a very problematic year for interlibrary loan services as the Texas State Library and Archives Commission (TSLAC) tries to resolve serious problems with their server which hosts the ILLiad client state wide. TSLAC has taken steps to improve the service. Plans are to upgrade the server providing us with better speed and support of their very busy data intense system. TSLAC is also looking into turning over the server host responsibilities to a new vendor. They will also upgrade the ILLiad client to a new version. Stay tuned for announcements in respect to these upgrades. In the meantime while I am out, report problems regarding our system to Debbie. In turn she will let you know of any activity changes such as downtime. Future challenges ahead for ILL services Most of you are aware that TSLAC is also embarking on making changes in interlibrary loan operations through out the state of Texas. To fund and facilitate explorations of possible alternatives to the current ILL system our office here in Austin as well as all ILL centers through out the state will undergo budget cuts. The results for Austin are loss of staff (1 full time position) as well as a lower budget limiting postage and supplies. We will continue to work hard to provide support for your interlibrary loan services. This year has been truly challenging, with all of the down time it has been impossible to do our work. Our office has suffered in our total lending numbers which I have been particularly proud of over the past 6 or 7 years. We will overcome this down time and move forward with the challenges ahead. Continue to call us with questions or concerns. We are here for you. Overdue Notices and other details With the loss of 1 position I took on responsibility for all overdue notices in our office, lending, borrowing and APL local material. Due to the technical problems with the ILLiad system, it has been impossible to keep up with the notices. I sent out overdue notices for borrowing for the first time since March. Remember when you receive these notices for those at the 'blocked' level we remove the block immediately. Please call if you are blocked and we will remove it. Do let us know the status of your requests so we can clear or update your transactions as needed. Hopefully you will be able to play more of a role in your account when we upgrade to 7.3. For APL supplied items I will send overdue notices for April. There may be some March notices to resend or send. We suffered extreme down time and slowness during March and April so please bare with me as I play catch up with overdue notices. Due to ILLiad problems some arrival emails are not arriving to your email accounts for shipped material. This only occurs for material loaned from Austin Public Library. We have not resolved this problem. I continue to monitor it. The upside is we do not need a return email from you for these items because they finish as soon as we ship the item. If you receive your emails for locally supplied items from Austin, it is ok to send us the emails on the return. If you do not receive the email do not worry. I check your APL library card account and send overdue notices based on the SIRSI circ system not ILLIad as I do for the borrowed items from other libraries. Undeliverable emails. More problems! Due to the proxy status of our iloan account here in our office, some of your email providers can now determine that our [email protected] email address is actually located at the TSL server and not here with the city of Austin. We can not resolve this issue at the city level. We can only try to resend any undelivered emails through our personal email accounts. I have one corporate library whose email account was the first indication that there was a problem. It was one of our customers who enlightened us to the actual problem. We can either send in the US mail undelivered emails or resend them to you through our personal accounts. This is another issue that the State Library may have to address. I spoke with my IT network person and he says there is nothing he can do. We experienced some improvement in speed and stability of the system this week. Hopefully there will be no serious down time while I am out. There may be a server upgrade that will take the web pages down. We have no date on this upgrade but Debbie will keep you posted. Thanks so much for all you do! Keep us posted regarding the status of your transactions. It is summer reading program time so here's to a successful summer! Best regards, Nancy Gemmel, Managing Librarian Interlibrary Loan Austin Public Library 800 Guadalupe Street Austin, Texas 78701 ------------------------------ [email protected] phone 512-974-7399 fax 512 974-7464 TOLL FREE TX 18002421880
