Delight library users by transforming their borrowing experience

When the University of Gloucestershire’s library staff moved to WorldShare^® Management Services (WMS), they found that their new WorldShare Interlibrary Loan (ILL) service worked more smoothly with catalog searching and circulation than was possible with their previous system. “I now realize how much time we could have saved,” said Debs Jones-Davis, Interlibrary Loan Officer.

Although Debs was delighted with these improvements, she wondered if things could get even better. She turned her attention to Tipasa^®, OCLC’s ILL management system, and saw what a valuable addition it would be. With Tipasa, the library could handle a much higher volume of requests while delivering an even better user experience.

With WMS in place, setting up Tipasa proved straightforward. “OCLC’s implementation team set out the steps in a clear calendar format, and it was easy to work through them,” said Debs. “It all went very smoothly.”

With WMS and Tipasa together, the University of Gloucestershire has more than doubled its ILL borrowing requests. “To our surprise, this has not led to an increase in ILL costs, and we’ve even made cost savings with Tipasa,” said Debs. “Once we started using Tipasa to increase our borrowing from other libraries, the costs started to go down.”

International borrowing has transformed the range of resources available to library users. “We’d never borrowed from outside the UK because our system didn’t allow it,” Debs said, “but Tipasa makes international borrowing so straightforward. We have definitely increased the fulfillment rate of our requests.”

Tipasa has pleased both faculty and students with its improved ILL experience. “Being able to view their ILL account has been the major breakthrough,” said Debs. “They can see all their current ILLs, what they’ve requested in the past, and when items are due back.”

With a raft of helpful features for library staff, time spent per transaction is much lower, despite the higher volume of ILL requests, and borrowing from other libraries has cut down costs. Debs concluded, “It’s a really good setup, and further updates will bring even more improvements.”

Library at a glance

• Supports an educational institute founded in 1847, which achieved university status in 2001
• Part of a student-centered university that builds personalized support into every step of the learning journey
• Supports the university’s research, 44% of which was classified as world-leading or internationally excellent by the UK Research Excellence Framework (REF)