When the library closed its physical doors in March, new doors of the digital sort opened up. Yet the disruption of access service for physical materials, lasting several months, has yielded a re-working of processes for how we get our students and faculty the resources they need for their teaching and learning.
For this month’s post, the heads of Charles Library Access Services, Acquisitions & Collection Development, and Learning & Research Services’ social science unit (Justin Hill, Brian Schoolar & Olivia Given Castello) sat down with me to discuss recent improvements in how we provide patrons access to digital materials.
It started with the Get Help Finding a Digital Copy service, initiated when we closed the library buildings. When a patron is searching the library catalog and discovers a physical item of interest, Get Help Finding a Digital Copy appears as an option.
The request is routed to a virtual reference staff member who reviews multiple sources to find and point the patron to that electronic version of their desired item. When the Libraries had access to the HathiTrust Emergency Temporary Access Service, over 40% of our print collection was available digitally. And of course, there are other sources for e-books, both open access and for purchase. Learning & Research Services (LRS) librarians, and other virtual reference team members, were busy fielding dozens of requests each day for these digital copies. This service continues to be incredibly popular.
How did this success lead to a change in workflow? As summer went on and emergency access options were expiring, the success rate for Get Help Finding a Digital Copy request fulfillment declined. LRS and Collections Management staff collaborated to design a new workflow that involved Acquisitions staff more directly in the fulfillment process. This allowed them to maximize the possible purchase options and improve the fulfillment success rate.
At about the same time, the Access Services department was moving to provide all digital copies for course reserves. In the course of providing faculty with options for their course reserves, they also took advantage of this new workflow by steering the requests for e-books to Acquisitions.
Moving to electronic course reserves opened up other opportunities, like introducing both faculty, staff and students to our services for scanning book chapters and sending them directly (and quickly) to the patron via document delivery. Even better, faculty will learn how to get their course reserves on Canvas so that students have ready access to the materials.
What made these collaborations between departments work?
- Good communications between the departments to facilitate the best solution to a problem.
- Willingness of staff to bring their expertise to develop the most efficient workflow and to work together in new ways.
- And of course, shared value for creating an excellent experience for users.
So how is this assessment? Reflecting on our work and how it might be improved is an important kind of assessment. There are also numbers to show increasing requests and improved turn-around time for those requests. Additionally, we can see success in the many thank you notes received via email, high satisfaction ratings on virtual reference, and most importantly, the pride of continually improving our services to patrons, even when challenged by disruption.