OCLC Resource Sharing Conference 2018

The College of New Jersey (TCNJ) is committed to continuously improving services and recently implemented the ILLiad request management system, joined RapidILL and RapidR, and reviewed and revised workflows. The Humanities Librarian ramped up instruction efforts to further drive ILL use. Patrons responded by increasing their ILL requests, particularly for non-returnables.
Despite vastly improved ILL turnaround times and instructional efforts, some patrons, especially in the History Department, remain reluctant to make ILL requests of returnables.
To find out why, TCNJ Library’s Humanities and Access Services Librarians undertook a study of history faculty and their capstone students’ use of ILL for returnables. This presentation describes the results of the survey and a plan for instruction and outreach. Survey results are cross-referenced with actual ILL use statistics with an aim to aggregate reality vs. perception in the use of ILL services among local historians and their students.