Unmediated OCLC Direct Request - Configuring ILLiad and OCLC Resource Sharing Settings

Setting up ILLiad to use OCLC Direct Request/Automated Request Manager (ARM) allows your ILL operation to implement unmediated ILL Borrowing for any ILLiad transactions that meet your criteria for automatic requesting. Customer requests come in from any of the usual sources, such as the ILLiad web pages, OpenURL, etc., and are routed, either manually or automatically using a routing rule, to a status of Awaiting Direct Request Sending. The ILLiad Connection Manager then automatically selects any transactions at that status and sends them to various OCLC Lenders according to the preferences specified in your institution's OCLC Direct Request parameters. This process works for both loans and articles, as OCLC will choose its lending string for articles based on the volume and issue of the serial request.

When a request is sent, it moves to a status of Awaiting Direct Request Lenders, where the ILLiad Connection Manager service assigns an ILL Number, OCLC Number, and the OCLC Lending String from the already sent OCLC request and adds this information to the ILLiad transaction record. The transaction is then moved to the status of Request Sent. As requested items arrive from Lending institutions, they may be processed and delivered to the requesting customers like any other incoming Borrowing requests.

Setting Up ILLiad to use OCLC Direct Request 

These setup steps explain the prerequisites outlined above.

Disabling ILL Access

Disabling the FirstSearch ILL Form will remove this request option from the FirstSearch pages. If these pages are currently being used by your customers to submit requests, this will eliminate that method of requesting ILL materials in favor of the OpenURL link under External Resources. Disabling this method of requesting should probably be done at the same time you enable OpenURL so your customers will not be overly inconvenienced. Log on to the FirstSearch Administrative pages with your OCLC Authorization and Password and do the following: Navigate to the Resource Sharing tab and on the right side under the ILL Settings section make sure that the checkbox for ILL Access is unchecked.

Configuring Keys Related to OCLC Direct Request

There are two keys affecting the OCLC Direct Request process.

• DirectRequestEnabled: Must be set to Yes. This key can be found in the Customization Manager under Borrowing | Direct Request.
• SystemIDOCLCSymbol: Must be set to your OCLC Symbol. This key can be found in the Customization Manager under System | General.

Making sure all Transaction records to be sent via OCLC Direct Request include an ISBN, ISSN, or OCLC Number

The default routing rule used by Direct Request references only the ISBN and ISSN fields. To use the OCLC Number as well, you would need to modify this routing rule to include the ESPNumber (External Service Provider Number) field.

OCLC Resource Sharing Settings

Setting Up Direct Request Profiles in the ILLiad Client

You must have at least one Direct Request Profile for Loans setup for OCLC. Direct Request Profiles may now be set up in the ILLiad Client. Although the interface is now a part of the ILLiad Client, it works exactly as the OCLC web pages do for the same task. This should typically be a fairly simple profile containing few restrictions. It should allow requesting for loans (Books) and it should probably exclude OCLC Direct Request use for duplicates and for items held by your institution. If you currently have multiple Direct Request Profiles set up, you may want to look into removing some of them and simplifying the one you keep. Most institutions should not need more than two profiles -- one for monographs and one for serials.

Direct Request Profiles are created on the Direct Request Profiles tab in the OCLC Resource Sharing Settings form in the ILLiad Client. It is located under the Resource Sharing Settings button on the System ribbon: System | Resource Sharing Settings | Direct Request Profiles. All bibliographic format options available in OCLC WCRS admin, with the exception of e-audio, are available in the ILLiad Direct Request Profile form. Bibliographic formats selected and saved in the Direct Request profile are automatically set in WCRS. Likewise, bibliographic formats added in OCLC WCRS are saved in the ILLiad Direct Request Profiles.

Setting up Direct Request Preferences in the ILLiad Client

Rules governing your OCLC Direct Request Preferences (Custom Holdings Groups and Paths) must be set up for OCLC. Preferences may now be set up in the ILLiad Client. Direct Request Preferences are created on the Custom Holdings Group and Custom Holdings Paths tabs in the OCLC Resource Sharing Settings form in the ILLiad Client. It is located under the Resource Sharing Settings button on the System ribbon:

System | Resource Sharing Settings | Custom Holdings Path and System | Resource Sharing Settings | Custom Holdings Groups.

Using ILLiad with Direct Request for Loans

The following prerequisites and setup procedures are for using ILLiad with Direct Request for Loans. If you also want to use Direct Request for Articles, the additional criteria and steps that need to be taken are outlined below.

Prerequisites for Direct Request for Loans

ALL of the following criteria MUST be met before the OCLC Direct Request process will work with your ILLiad installation.

Prerequisites For OCLC

• Disable ILL Access in FirstSearch.

Prerequisites for ILLiad

• Configure customization keys affecting the OCLC Direct Request process.
• Be sure all Transaction records to be sent via OCLC Direct Request include an ISBN, ISSN, or OCLC Number.
• Set up an OCLC Direct Request Profile for Loans. This can be done within the ILLiad Client.
• Set up rules governing your OCLC Direct Request Preferences (Custom Holdings Groups and Paths). This can be done within the ILLiad Client.

Using ILLiad with Direct Request for Articles

You can use the OCLC WorldCat Knowledge Base to process article requests through Direct Request. When a Direct Request Lender receives a request for an electronic article, Direct Request has already verified through the WorldCat Knowledge Base and License Manager that the Lender has access to the article and permission to provide it through ILL. The request contains a direct link to the article, which will appear in the Collections sub-tab located within the Detail tab on the request, and without additional checking, the Lender can employ its usual methods to supply the Borrowing library:

Additional Prerequisites for Direct Request for Articles

The following prerequisites list the setup steps that must be taken in addition to the steps above if you want to use Direct Request for Articles.

If you want to use Direct Request for Articles as a Borrower, ALL of the following criteria MUST be met before the OCLC Direct Request for Articles process will work with your ILLiad installation. If you just want to be a Lender, only the first 3 requirements apply.

• Send request to OCLC to participate in Direct Request for Articles.
• Work with OCLC to add article holdings information to the WorldCat Knowledge Base.
• Activate the link to holdings information in the Knowledge Base. Note that Article holdings information must be added to the Knowledge Base before you will be able to activate the link.
• Turn off the deflection of article requests.
• Add or modify your Direct Request profile for Articles.
• Add or modify your OCLC Direct Request Preferences (Custom Holdings Groups and Paths) as needed.

Setting Up ILLiad to use OCLC Direct Request for Articles

These setup steps explain the prerequisites outlined above.

Activating the Link to Holdings in the Knowledge Base (KB)

Activate the link to the WorldCat Knowledge Base in the WorldCat Services Administrative Module. The option is located at Resource Sharing | Staff ILL Settings | Resource Sharing Options. Check the On box and click Save Changes.

Turning off Deflection of Article Requests

The setting to turn off Deflection is located in the OCLC Policies Directory. You can find the link, Policies Directory under the System ribbon on the ILLiad Main page. Make sure your settings don't turn off your ability to send articles (e-serials).

Adding or Modifying the Direct Request Profile for Articles in ILLiad

You must set up a Direct Request Profile for serials before OCLC Direct Request for Articles will work. Direct Request Profiles may now be set up in the ILLiad Client. Although the interface is now a part of the ILLiad Client, it works exactly as the OCLC web pages do for the same task. This should typically be a fairly simple profile containing few restrictions. It should allow requesting for copies (Serials) and it should probably exclude OCLC Direct Request use for duplicates and for items held by your institution. If you currently have multiple Direct Request Profiles set up, you may want to look into removing some of them and simplifying the one you keep. Most institutions should not need more than two profiles -- one for monographs and one for serials.

Direct Request Profiles are created on the Direct Request Profiles tab in the OCLC Resource Sharing Settings form in the ILLiad Client. It is located under the Resource Sharing Settings button on the System ribbon: System | Resource Sharing Settings | Direct Request Profiles.

All bibliographic format options available in OCLC WCRS admin, with the exception of e-audio, are available in the ILLiad Direct Request Profile form. Bibliographic formats selected and saved in the Direct Request profile are automatically set in WCRS. Likewise, bibliographic formats added in OCLC WCRS are saved in the ILLiad Direct Request Profiles.

You can retrieve suggested lender strings from OCLC based on the serial's volume and year as well as the lending libraries' local holdings information. Be sure to make a selection in the Prefers E-Article Processing field in your Direct Request Articles Profile.

Adding or Modifying OCLC Direct Request Preferences (Custom Holdings) in ILLiad

Rules governing your OCLC Direct Request Preferences for Articles (Custom Holdings Groups and Paths) must be set up for OCLC. Preferences may now be set up in the ILLiad Client.

Direct Request Preferences are created on the Custom Holdings Group and Custom Holdings Paths tabs in the OCLC Resource Sharing Settings form in the ILLiad Client. It is located under the Resource Sharing Settings button on the System ribbon. (System | Resource Sharing Settings | Custom Holdings Path and Custom Holdings Groups).

When adding lenders for articles to your Custom Holdings Groups and Paths, the KBIL group affiliate symbol is a good resource as it lists all libraries that have added information to OCLC's Knowledge Base.

If OCLC Direct Request Sending Fails

OCLC Direct Request Sending may fail if there are problems with the ISBN/ISSN information attached to the ILLiad transaction, or if there is some other problem finding the correct information in the OCLC database. If this happens for a given transaction, OCLC will place the request into the review file and add a note to the record explaining the reason it failed to send. This note is added by the OCLC Direct Request Sending process directly into ILLiad and will be reflected in the ILLiad Transaction record immediately. The ILLiad Connection Manager will then download the review request, remove the review file entry for the item, adds the OCLC number to the request and move the transaction to Awaiting Request Processing for standard ILL processing.

Routing Transactions to Awaiting Direct Request Sending

Routing Items Manually

You should be able to route any transaction to the new Awaiting Direct Request Sending status manually using the Routing menu as long as that status exists in the CustomQueues table.

This queue will exist by default and should not need to be created.

Automatic Routing

To automate this feature so that certain transactions are automatically routed to Awaiting Direct Request Sending, allowing the ILLiad Connection Manager to grab them and route them to OCLC to be Direct Produced, you will need to modify the default Direct Request routing rule (below) to do this.

An Example Routing Rule (Single-Server)

An example Routing table entry for this type of routing rule might look something like this:

This rule will exist in the Routing Table by default although the RuleActive value will be set to No. It may be activated by changing RuleActive to Yes.

A Modified Routing Rule for Shared Server Systems

The MatchString on a Routing table entry for this type of routing rule may need to reference the NVTGC field if all sites on the server are not using this feature. For example, in a Shared Server system with Symbols ABC, XYZ, PDQ, if ABC and XYZ wanted to use Direct Request, but PDQ did not, you would need to add the following to the matchstring:

and u.NVTGC in ('ABC', 'XYZ')

This would allow the two designated sites to use this feature without forcing the third site to do so as well. If the above NVTGC reference is not added, the Routing Rule will affect all sites in the system.

Please be aware that the above examples are only the default routing rules for this function. To use different criteria to determine what should and what should not be sent using Direct Request. If so, your MatchString value may be very different from the above examples. In addition, while the above Routing rule examples limit the use of this feature to Loan requests, it is possible to automatically send Article requests this way as well. Be aware however that the Direct Request process may not reliably reference holdings information when selecting potential lenders.