Tracking Purchase on Demand--Borrowing or Doc Del?

Many ILLiad users create custom workflows to use ILLiad for Purchase-on-Demand programs. One of the options for tracking and processing such requests is to route them to Document Delivery for processing rather than in Borrowing. There isn’t as strong consensus of practice on which module to process items that are purchased. Here is some of the rationale for using each module.

Borrowing

We consider this a borrowed transaction because we had to obtain the material from an outside source. This logic best fits situations where purchase-on-demand transactions are typically articles and purchase provisions typically do not allow you to use the material again for another user. Delivery of electronically delivered items would be managed in the Check In from Lending Library workform.

Doc Del

We consider this a document delivery transaction because we purchased the item, and it is now part of our collection. This logic best fits situations where purchase-on-demand transactions are typically loans. Routing article requests to this module also enables the "Mark Found Scan Now" button which can facilitate easier delivery for articles.

ILLiad is flexible enough to set up the configuration based on request type if you want to use one configuration for loans and the other for articles. Whatever workflow you chose, you will likely want to create some indicator on the request that the item was obtained in the manner outside the typical ILL workflow. Creating a lender address record for the vendor and adding that record to a "Vendor" group is a straightforward way to track purchased items in the Web Reports.