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12th ALIA National Library Technicians Conference
Are you being served? Quality customer service in document supply for the new millenniumMargaret PembrokeAbstractThe evolution of the electronic era has seen a shift in the way clients meet their information needs in an online learning environment. Traditional paper based document supply services have struggled to maintain a reasonable service level and there has been a change in the perception of what constitutes 'good' customer service. The shift towards the 'just-in-time' philosophy for academic libraries, as well as spiraling serial costs, has seen an ever- increasing demand on document supply services. To meet the needs of its clients Southern Cross University library developed an in-house, fully automated, web-based document supply system. The consequent streamlining of processes has seen a close to 50per cent increase in the number of requests processed in 2002. Turn-a-round times, as per the National Resource Sharing Working Group Benchmarking Study, have been maintained without any increase in staffing levels. The utilisation of technologies such as Ariel, Prospero and the Internet to provide a web-based requesting and administrative system is described as well as the consultative process involved in the development of the system. IntroductionDocument delivery has under gone numerous changes over the past ten years. Change has been driven by advances in information and communications technology (ICT), in particular the growth of the World Wide Web (WWW), the spiraling costs of serials subscriptions and rising demands for resources in the academic arena (Davies, 1998, Prowse, 2000). The Document Supply Service at Southern Cross University has managed to stay abreast of these changes and deliver quality customer service to its clients. Southern Cross University is a regional university with campuses at Coffs Harbour, Lismore and Tweed Heads covering a distance of over 300 kilometres along the northern New South Wales coast of Australia. In 2002 the University had over 600 staff and over 11,000 students, approximately 50 per cent of who were studying externally. The University offers courses in varied disciplines such as Contemporary Arts, Business, Education, Nursing, Natural and Complementary Medicine, Applied Science, Law, Psychology, Exercise Science, and Tourism to name a few. In keeping in line with the University library Mission Statement, the Document Supply Service has provided 'innovative and effective access to resources and excellence in service' through the development and implementation of the Document Supply database. This paper provides a retrospective look at the Document Supply Service of Southern Cross University library and outlines the development of the information technology (IT) infrastructure that supports the delivery of the service. BackgroundThe Document Supply Service at Southern Cross University library was developed to meet the burgeoning needs of the growing research community at the University. It was recognised early on by researchers and library management that the small and relatively new collection could not provide the depth of material required for the research and development needs of the University's Staff and Postgraduate communities. The University had sprung from the Teachers College and College of Advanced Education campuses of the 1970's that emphasised teaching rather than research with the supporting library collections reflecting this situation. Escalating costs of serials subscriptions over the last few years had left some of the University's Schools in a position where 120per cent of their library budget was already committed before one single book had been purchased. A solution was sought through the Serials Access Project (SAP) where staff were surveyed to ascertain which serials titles were considered necessary for their teaching and research needs and to identify duplicate electronic subscriptions as well as possible substitute titles. The role of the Document Supply Service was to ensure items that were required and had been identified through table-of-contents services that were replacing subscriptions could be supplied 'just in time'. The challenge for the Document Supply Service was to ensure the timely fulfillment of these requests and make sure that 'just in time' didn't become 'just too late' (Davies, 1998, p. 325). The implementation of these policies has meant that the Document Supply Service has often received welcome financial support from the Graduate Research College and more recently from other research based sections of the University. This has seen a steady number of requests made over the past nine years and a close to 50 per cent increase between 2001 and 2002 (Figure 1). Figure 1. Interlibrary Loan Statistics 1995-2003. In the Beginning....In 1995, requests were handwritten and given to reference staff at the User Services desk to find Interlibrary Loan (ILL) locations before being forwarded to Document Supply for entering onto Ilamail. Often copyright declarations were left unsigned and requests were delayed until clients were contacted and a signature obtained. Ilamail provide some management statistics but was prone to crashes, was not networked and required all the data to be keyed into it. The procedures within the Section at the time meant that several staff in different sections of the library handled ILL requests before they were processed. One of the first changes made was that all location searching was handed over to qualified and experienced library Technicians working within the Document Supply Service who were also more in touch with the supplying libraries. A key finding of the National Resource Sharing Working Group Benchmarking Survey was that the better performing libraries were automated, had reduced the number of steps in the ILL process and employed experienced staff (Ruthven and Magnay, 2002). It must be remembered that it was 1995 and the Southern Cross University Document Supply Service was actually one of the more forward thinking in that it had automated the process of sending utilising Ilamail and Ilanet. Another initiative was the implementation of Ariel software in 1996. The advantages and cost effectiveness of Ariel are now well documented and it has become a very fast and efficient method of document delivery (Landes, 1997, Porat, 2001). Initially mainly used between campuses, Ariel has now become an important part of the process we have in place. IlanetWEB replaced Ilamail and due to the number of requests dealt with the data management facilities provided by IlanetWEB were not suitable for our purposes. IlanetWEB was used to send requests and progress reports. The internal processes became completely paper based creating a series of different files for issued requests awaiting receipt, on loan items, and completed requests filed for copyright compliance. Due to the number of paper files it was extremely difficult to trace requests either for the purposes of overdue items, to notify clients of what they had on loan, or had already received. Progress reports were rarely attempted. The system lent itself to human error especially when dealing with the volume of requests that were on average 200 per week. The vision was to automate and eliminate as many of these manual processes as possible and streamline the whole procedure. In 1999 the library developed its first online web- based requesting form for ILL and Off Campus requests, which was supported by a Filemaker Pro database. Clients were able to make requests from their office or home at their own convenience. The forms enabled clients to cut and paste citations directly from the database they were searching and submit a request for ILL or, in the case of external students, supply from the University library's collection. Although online requesting was a huge leap forward the administrative side of this system was still not networked meaning there was only one point of access. All data had to be re- keyed into IlanetWEB to be sent and the database then also had to be updated. Clients were required to register and sign a copyright declaration to gain access. This was then processed, a password issued and the declaration filed. Clients were unable to make any requests until the declaration had been received, processed and a username and password e-mailed to them. At this stage students already needed different usernames and passwords for e-mail and Intranet access, one more password added to the confusion. Most importantly though it was not a robust system and became highly unstable as the database grew larger. The system was also being run parallel with the old paper based system, which required staff to look in two places for requests. Requests between campuses were still on paper and faxed, creating a third place to look for requests. Development of the databaseIn 2000 development was begun on a new database by a team which included the Network Services Librarian, members of Document Supply and members of Information Technology Section whom the University library had contracted to build the system. The first step in developing the database was an in-depth analysis of the workflows of the section where every step in the handling processes of both ILL requests and Off Campus requests was examined. The analysis allowed us to identify processes that could be automated as well as processes that were redundant. This led to the creation of the following requirements:
Early in the development of the database clients were asked to examine and supply feedback on the registration process, ease of use of forms, clarity of wording and so on. Different terminology used by library staff, IT staff and the client was one of the key problem areas identified. What was to the client a photocopy of an article was to us a conference paper and became to IT a non-returnable resource! During the development phase it became quite important to ensure that IT understood the processes involved and developed the database the way we wanted it, not how they thought it should be. At the same time we had to identify our best practices so we could build the new system around them. These included targeting libraries that could offer electronic delivery via Ariel, thereby reducing turnaround time by several days. The Document Supply Section had begun testing using Prospero to offer desktop delivery so delivery via Ariel was desirable. Prospero works in collaboration with Ariel, it converts Ariel files (TIFF images) into Portable Document Files (PDF) and then places them on a Web site for direct client access. The Prospero software e-mails the users a copyright declaration and instructions on accessing their document so that they can then download it from the server. The combination of both software packages can reduce turn-a-round time by several days particularly to isolated areas. We chose to use Infotrieve as a first option after exhausting holdings through our co-operative agreement with UNILINC libraries rather that only sending them 'hard to source' materials. We found that Infotrieve were able to supply the majority of materials within one week and negatives or extra cost reports were mainly for incorrectly cited items, obscure European titles or Australian and New Zealand materials. Once a negative or extra cost report was received from Infotrieve then further searching and verification of bibliographic information was done and the item resent directly to a new location. We also changed our processes so that in many cases we would not send materials published in Australia or New Zealand to Infotrieve, but rather do a Kinetica search once the item was not available within UNILINC. The databaseThe document supply database is an Oracle database running on UNIX servers. The web server is Apache with PHP web scripting. PHP (recursive acronym for 'PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor') is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). The client and administrator web interfaces are HTML pages with embedded PHP scripts to communicate with the database. Reports and printing are run through Microsoft Access using Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) connections to the Oracle database. Both the university staffing database and Student Administration database are Oracle databases, allowing easy transfer of staff and student data to the Document Supply potential user table. User authentication is managed University-wide with Kerberos authentication, which provides a single sign-on for Intranet access, modem banks and e-mail. Clients no longer have to remember several passwords to gain access to Document Supply as the system becomes available as soon as they login to the Intranet and enter the Document Supply Service (Figure 2). Figure 2. Client details screen. Note: Clients can edit their own delivery details. The Oracle database is a relational database with all data organised in a series of tables that are linked by a common element or relationship. The flat structure of the data allows for easy searching and the organisation of the tables allows multiple access points for searches. The Access ODBC connection permits administrators to create and run queries within the Document Supply database. The database also provides extensive management reports on usage statistics, overdue items, progress reports, turnaround times and most importantly cost recovery. The Document Supply Service has been able to provide schools with reports that list the number of requests from their school, who is making them and the total cost. This has been a very useful tool to create awareness of the amount of money being spent on Document Supply and provide a transparent means for the University library to consider a user pays system for Document Supply. The reports from the system have been used to identify weaknesses and strengths in the collection and consequently have become a valuable collection development tool. Murphy and Rupp-Serano (2000) discuss the use of Document Supply statistics and data to aid in collection development and as an ongoing user needs assessment tool. Examples of some queries include: List of books requested that were published after 2001, list of journals sorted by the number of times items have been requested from that title, list of books requested from Coffs Harbour Students from the Lismore Campus and average turnaround time for requests. The database records all requests from Southern Cross University students or staff for ILL or Intra Campus materials. Items required from Coffs Harbour Campus are printed and processed at Coffs Harbour. Internal students do not get the option to request materials from their home campus, that is, the database will not display the 'delivery from Lismore' option to a Lismore staff person or a Lismore internal student. Requests from Off Campus students go directly to the campus where the student has located the item and are despatched via courier from that campus. All ILLs are sent out from the Lismore Campus, where Document Supply staff edit the delivery details so the supplying library sends books directly to either Coffs Harbour or Tweed Gold Coast Campus in an effort to reduce turnaround times. A feature of the Document Supply system is the ability to e-mail requests directly from the database to the supplying library. Document supply staff have entered data on over 370 libraries over the life of the database. The library National Union Catalogue (NUC) symbol is used as a unique identifier and in most cases data is copied directly from the Inter library Resources Sharing (ILRS) directory website. Streamling processesIt became evident that to run the Document Supply Service effectively, all requests had to be dealt with by the same system. For this reason we decided to abandon the use of paper requests. To implement this radical change Document Supply Staff had to make themselves available to educate clients on how to register and place a request. Even the greatest technophobes have been won over by the simplicity of the system. Figure 3. Enter searches screen. Call numbers are cut and pasted directly from Kinetica or catalogues. The system has also lead to multi-skilling of staff. Sending and searching of requests was previously separated with searches of ABN and later Kinetica being stapled to request forms and then given to staff to enter the data. Current processes are quite different with the majority of requests, once printed being handled by one person before being sent. Call numbers for holdings are pasted directly from Kinetica or the relevant catalogue into the NUC symbol and call number field and the item is sent immediately (Figure 3). We decided to implement desktop delivery using Prospero at the same time as implementing the new database. Clients were offered desktop delivery where possible. If we had received the document via Ariel and were able to convert it to PDF via Prospero we would desktop deliver. Everything else was sent via the mail. This service was accepted with mixed results and its efficiency is highly dependent on the client's modem speed and patience. Experience has shown that those clients accessing Prospero from on campus had very little trouble, but dialing in can lead to lengthy delays in downloading the articles. When explaining the problems to clients, the reduction in turnaround time is enough to justify the lengthy download time. We chose to mount all Prospero documents on a server and redirect the client to the server where they could collect/view their documents. This option was chosen rather than direct e-mail as many of our clients had e-mail addresses that would only allow 4MB of data. In some cases this, would have only been two articles. The service has been generally well received particularly when sending items overseas. It has been used to send documents to Singapore, United Arab Emirates and Norway to name a few places. BenchmarkingAt the same time as the Database was being developed the Document Supply Section was also taking part in the National Resource Sharing Working Group (NRSWG) Benchmarking Study. The key findings of this, which were published after the implementation of the system, were that the automation of processes was one of the best ways that turnaround times can be decreased and customer satisfaction increased (Ruthven and Magnay, 2002). Universities in Australia have come under close scrutiny over the last few years as far as benchmarking and best practices. The implementation of Total Quality Management (TQM) practices has had a huge impact on the way Libraries perceive themselves and their clients (Pilling, 1997). Document delivery is one the key performance measures along with client satisfaction identified by the Council of Australian University Libraries (CAUL) (Pitman et al., 2001). Results of the Patron Satisfaction Survey component of the NRSWG ILL/DD Benchmarking Study 2000 indicated that 97per cent of Southern Cross University clients were satisfied with the timeliness of the service. The section was awarded the Southern Cross University Vice Chancellors Award in Recognition of Outstanding Service in 2002, an indication that clients are still satisfied. Future directionsThe Document Supply Service cannot sustain the yearly increase in requests of approximately 10per cent whilst maintaining its current service levels at the current level of staffing. The Service is investigating the practicality of unmediated document supply in collaboration with a commercial supplier such as Infotrieve. It would be expected the number of requests would reduce as a consequence of the introduction of charges and this may have to be considered. The University library is in the process of implementing SFX and Metalib software. The introduction of this software will greatly reduce the number of items requested that are already held in the collection by providing a seamless search interface between the library catalogue and its e-journal holdings. Version 2 of the Document Supply database is also in the pipeline with ideas for upgrading being gathered. The ability for clients to export their citations from the database to bibliographic management software such as Endnote is one such idea. Clients have also made it clear they would like more transparency in the system so they can see exactly how their request is going. ConclusionDavies (1998, p. 321) draws attention to the current climate of 'education as a paid-for commodity' and adoption of business management principles such as TQM and Benchmarking seem only fitting in this environment. The quest to improve services and seek faster more efficient means of meeting clients needs is, necessarily, a constant one. The current ICT environment provides a platform that makes constant improvement feasible with the ability to automate many processes. Southern Cross University Document Supply Service has developed an in house document supply database that utilises the advances in ICT and addresses the needs of its clients. In seeking to constantly improve the delivery of services the Document Supply Service has implemented the best practice recommendations derived from the National Resource Sharing Working Group Benchmarking Survey. The automation of services, streamlining of processes and the use of trained and experienced staff, has seen the development of a more efficient service. AcknowledgementsReferencesMargaret Pembroke began her library career at Ryde Municipal library in 1982 and in 1991 moved on to Sterling Winthrop Pharmaceuticals where she first gained experience in Interlibrary Loans. She graduated from the North Coast Institute of TAFE with a library Technician qualification in 1995 after beginning her studies at the Ultimo Campus in Sydney and relocating to the North Coast in 1994. She now works at Southern Cross University library where she has been employed within the Document Supply Section for the past nine years and is currently studying a Bachelor of Arts (Library and Information Studies) through Charles Sturt University.
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