IDS/GIST
Introduction and
Best Practices.
Deciding if GIST is right for your ILL office.
T. Jacob (Jake) Weiner – ILL Borrowing Supervisor
George Mason University (VGM)
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What is the IDS?
• The Information Delivery Services Project (IDS) is a group of
libraries in New York state.
• Their goal is to create a community of libraries for all aspects
of resource-sharing.
• They have looked at ILLiad and created a set of best practices,
then moved on to create GIST for expanding ILLiad’s
capabilities.
• They are kind of like VIVA.
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The IDS Project Workflow
Toolkit
• The toolkit contains many best practices and also contains
many resources that can be immediately integrated into ILLiad
like e-mail and printing templates.
• They keep abreast of developments surrounding ILLiad and
also create some of those developments on their own.
• GIST is an outflow from the IDS Project when they figured out
that ILLiad could be doing much more than just ILL.
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What is GIST?
• Getting It System Toolkit (GIST) is an integrated system for
acquisition and Interlibrary Loan.
• Locating and requesting items most efficiently.
• Integration of acquisition and Interlibrary Loan processes.
• Gift management.
• GIST is FREE!
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What does integrated ILL and
Acquisitions mean?
• There is more and more overlap between ILL and Acquisitions.
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•
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ILL can help acquisitions determine patron needs.
ILL can facilitate purchasing items on demand.
Can ILL take on more of a role in acquisitions itself?
• GIST lets you pick and choose to best fit your organizational design.
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What does the GIST work flow
look like?
• An example GIST workflow.
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Should ILL make Acquisitions
decisions?
• Policy considerations before making purchases.
• How much integration does your department need to make
purchases?
• What is the level of cooperation between ILL and Acquisitions at
your institution?
• Do you need to improve communication between ILL and other
departments?
• Can you help your Acquisitions department in collection
development without purchasing?
• Parallel processes already exist for ILL and Acquisitions.
• You can now purchase ILL materials through IFM at some
vendors, and many people already use document suppliers.
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What should we know before we
borrow?
• Should we be asking ourselves acquisition questions before
we borrow?
• Is the item being requested a good fit for our library?
• Is the item being requested within our budget?
• Can the item being requested help to give direction to develop
our collection?
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What should we do before we
borrow?
• What can we do to obtain an item before requesting a loan?
• Purchase on demand options?
• Some already use document delivery options, why not use them for
books?
• Amazon, Book sellers, other options?
• Purchase on demand criteria?
• Need
• Cost
• Availability
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What does the GIST website
look like?
• An example GIST enabled web page.
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Improved information for your
patron
• GIST can supply much more information for the patron as they
are making their request.
• Library Availability – Information is drawn directly from your
WorldCat records.
• Google Books Preview – Immediate availability if your patrons
prefer e-book options.
• Full Text options – Online Full Text options if they are available.
• Amazon.com Details – If your patrons would prefer to purchase
their own copy of the item, or if they just want the additional
information Amazon can provide.
• Purchasing options – Amazon and more.
• Feedback options – Since GIST is a relatively new system, patron
input is important.
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What does the GIST ILLiad
client look like?
• An example GIST enabled ILLiad client.
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Improved information for your
staff
• GIST will transfer the same information to you from the
request that the patron sees so you can make informed
borrowing/purchasing decisions.
• Quickly see if the item is held locally or a free online source.
• Set up parameters for inclusion into purchasing decisions.
• Use custom queues to facilitate purchasing decisions and e-mail
routing to inform patrons of purchasing decisions.
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The GIST Gift Manager
• An example of the of the GIST Gift Manager interface.
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Using Gift management to
facilitate ILL
• Gift management gets very little attention from ILL when it
can be incredibly useful.
• Often gifts are not tracked because they are low priority and
space is a premium.
• Using the Gift management system will allow you to track Gifts
and see if you actually have an item that your patron may need.
• Comprehensive gift management can massively improve
turnaround time on ILL requests and save money.
• Gift manager can use the SKU barcode to pull information about
the item.
• More cross-departmental communication may be necessary to
use this.
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The benefit of ILL making
acquisition decisions
• ILL requested items are going to BE USED.
• A patron wants the item. One use is more than most items
gained through the normal acquisitions process. There is also
evidence that an item requested through ILL will be used more
than once. Why aren’t we purchasing the item?
• There are already parallel processes between ILL and
acquisitions.
• You can use IFM to purchase items from some book sellers.
• Document Delivery companies already serve the same function
for articles.
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Getting the bang for your buck
from ILLiad
• GIST helps you get the most out of the cost of ILLiad.
• If you already have ILLiad, you can use GIST to expand your
capabilities and workflow without spending another dollar.
• If you don’t have ILLiad yet, you can use GIST to justify the cost of
implementing it.
• In the time of tightening budgets and cost cutting, GIST expands
ILLiad to improve customer service and helps to utilize the
resources that are currently being ignored.
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Disclaimer
• George Mason University doesn’t use GIST… yet!
• Coming 8.1 implementation and other technical and
departmental aspects have pushed it back.
• Working with other departments to establish cooperation and
communication before implementation.
• Moving forward one step at a time.
• We would like to implement the GIST request webform on our ILLiad
website first because we can do that without consulting anyone else
(except IT).
• We will expand from there as we can show the benefits of other
aspects of GIST to other departments (and when our IT staff gets
some free time).
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IDS and GIST information on
the web
• http://idsproject.org/tools/gist.aspx - The IDS Project page for
GIST.
• http://toolkit.idsproject.org/doku.php?id=wiki:gist – The IDS
Project wiki page for GIST.
• http://gettingitsystemtoolkit.wordpress.com/2011/03/30/gistacquisitions-manager-preview-2011-illiad-conference/ - The
2011 ILLiad conference presentation for GIST. (This one is
pretty advanced and for those that are already using GIST.)
• All of the pictures of GIST come from these websites and
permission was given to display them for this presentation.
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