With the Sirsi-Dynix merger, SirsiDynix is pleased to offer the URSA (Universal Resource Sharing Application) system as another ILL option for Unicorn customers. URSA expands our ever-growing family of ILL products, and now is a great time to review the options that SirsiDynix can offer Unicorn sites to help you participate effectively in resource sharing agreements. We have something that can fit into almost any workflow.
If you do most of your ILL transactions on OCLC either directly or via a client such as Illiad, you may find that the ILL Toolbar for Unicorn simplifies your interactions with OCLC. You can offer your community the ability to request materials on ILL via your preferred SirsiDynix public access interface. The ILL Toolbar allows you to forward those requests directly to OCLC via the ISO protocol. Your normal OCLC workflows then take over to complete the ILL process.
Do you participate in a resource sharing group that fills most ILL requests within the member libraries? If so, consider URSA. URSA offers unprecedented ILL support across disparate library systems via NCIP or scripted access to local systems. URSA includes a Web-based Z39.50 client that makes searching across member libraries easy for both staff and end users and includes rules supporting both mediated and unmediated ILL. URSA’s strong support for both NCIP and scripted access, as well as its well-integrated Z39.50 client, eliminates the need for labor intensive and security-insensitive copies of patron and bibliographic records to the centralized databases required by some ILL systems. Requests not filled within the URSA sharing group can be forwarded to OCLC via the OCLC gateway. For those of you who already use URSA but who may be participating via scripted access to your Unicorn servers, please consider upgrading your access via Unicorn’s NCIP server. This eliminates any security concerns that you may have about providing access to your server via telnet, and ensures that your participation in your resource sharing group will not be interrupted as functions change from one version to another. Best of all, URSA was designed for maximum staff efficiency. In addition to making unmediated ILL completely realistic, URSA can place holds, perform patron authentication checkout and check in items on disparate systems. This eliminates the need for staff to duplicate transactions on both the ILL system and the local ILS.
Maybe your library is highly focused on document delivery, or you find that many of your ILL needs are not met by your immediate sharing partners. Relais fits in well in this environment, and can even be used to enhance use of other systems such as URSA. Relais offers full support for the ISO ILL protocol, which makes forwarding requests that cannot be filled in your local group to international utilities such as OCLC a breeze. Relais also takes document delivery to new levels, even incorporating scanning stations into the full workflow.
In addition to these SirsiDynix-provided options, SirsiDynix’s NCIP and SIP2 servers, as well as our Consulting Services group, can make it easy for you to participate in ILL systems offered by other providers. Please contact your SirsiDynix account manager today for more information about all of the ways we can help make your ILL process more effective.