SirsiDynix: Resource-Sharing Solutions
Today's demanding library users are looking for a wide range of resources, many of which are not available in your own library. That's why your library partners with other libraries so that your institutions can support all of your users' needs.
This is where convenient self-service resource-sharing and interlibrary loan solutions from SirsiDynix are of strategic value to 21st-century libraries. Today's technology makes it easy for users to find the materials they want from a variety of local and remote resources. The result is more requests, which require more staff time and add more costs for libraries.
So how do libraries meet the growing demands for resource sharing among libraries, while facing the realities of tight budgets and short staffing. It's simple: SirsiDynix® URSA™ and SirsiDynix® Reciprocal Borrowing Solution™.
URSA
Resources
In today's world of information, there's no way your library can own or subscribe to every resource requested by your users. How can libraries meet users' demands while dealing with the obvious cost implications of resource sharing? The answer is SirsiDynix® URSA™, the Universal Resource Sharing Application. Not only does SirsiDynix URSA make it possible to enhance resource sharing services for your users and staff, but it can do so while reducing 75 percent of the staff time for an average ILL transaction and significantly reducing the costs per transaction.
Library users want fast, convenient self-service interlibrary loan. Today's technology makes it easy for them to find the materials they want from a variety of local and remote resources. The result is more requests, which typically require more staff time and add more costs for libraries, but tight budgets rarely permit additional staffing for interlibrary loan. Then how does your staff keep up?
URSA streamlines tasks so that staff perform four simple tasks to process requests from start to finish. It is no longer necessary for interlibrary loan experts to spend their time handling routine requests and many libraries have assigned this duty to circulation staff and even student workers. Links to local circulation systems automatically place holds on requested materials, check items out, create temporary bibliographic records and notify users at desired events. This means that your current staff can handle 3 or 4 times as many requests using URSA.
URSA Highlights
- Facilitates resource sharing among multi-vendor consortia and single libraries on a variety of integrated library systems
- Empowers users by putting options and choices at their fingertips with direct feedback on availability
- Automatically checks local catalogs and prevent orders for available items
- Reduces average staff time per request by 75 percent
- Lowers transaction costs by making requests user-driven
- Increases user satisfaction by making requests for many items self-service
- Focuses staff time and effort on difficult-to-find requests
- Supports standards, including NISO Circulation Interchange Protocol (NCIP)
Reciprocal Borrowing
Resources
People in communities with many libraries often enjoy extensive use of neighboring libraries close to their work, shopping or other regular travels. Libraries form reciprocal borrowing agreements to honor library cards within a geographic area but until now no automated solution existed to authenticate patrons across multiple automation systems.
SirsiDynix® Reciprocal Borrowing Solution™ offers automated borrower lookup and creation across multiple automation systems. A stand-alone module that is part of the SirsiDynix resource sharing product line, Reciprocal Borrowing revolutionizes service for "walk-in" interlibrary loans by allowing staff to authenticate "foreign" borrowers at their home library and automatically create a new record so that they can check out materials.
Some libraries hesitate to extend services to users from other libraries due to concerns about collection security and problem users. Reciprocal Borrowing makes it easy to identify users who abuse library services elsewhere so that libraries can confidently offer borrowing privileges only to patrons in good standing at their home institutions. With Reciprocal Borrowing, libraries can form regional agreements to improve services to all of their users without corresponding increases in collection budgets.
Reciprocal Borrowing provides an easy way for libraries to authenticate borrowers and capture information electronically, eliminating the need for manual registration. This allows libraries with reciprocal borrowing agreements to save up to 15 minutes of staff time per transaction by automating authentication and record creation. It works across multiple library automation systems by means of the NISO Circulation Interchange Protocol (NCIP) standard.
Reciprocal Borrowing Highlights
- Protects libraries from people who are "problem patrons" at their home library
- Enables staff to search all partners simultaneously
- Replaces the need for users to fill in registration forms
- Registers borrowers automatically without manual entry of borrower information
- Able to use existing barcode for new registration
- Removes the need to distribute multiple cards
- And much, much more...
Collection Exchange
Resources
Looking for a way to expand your collection without expanding your budget? Sharing resources is the most cost-effective way to continue to freshen the materials you can offer your users. The basic idea on which libraries themselves were founded – maximizing the usefulness of materials by circulating them – can be expanded further. Except in this case, whole collections of materials are loaned to a series of partner libraries, circulated, and eventually returned. The libraries involved conserve funds through reduced resource requirements, while users receive a better variety of materials.
Of course overseeing such a program, making sure materials are distributed fairly, and keeping track of where your library's resources are at any given time could mean many tedious hours for staff. And yet carefully tracking all the details is just what makes such a process successful.
That's why SirsiDynix developed Collection Exchange for the Unicorn® Library Management System. It lets you enjoy all the advantages of shared resources without the administrative chores that accompany it. Collection Exchange manages all the details, no matter how many libraries are involved or how complicated the arrangement your library chooses. Collection Exchange can help libraries of all types and sizes reach that elusive goal of offering more for less, by managing the rotation of collections among your group of libraries.
