by Carol Nelson
Quick Summary
In December 2015, OCLC's Interlibrary Loan Fee Management (IFM) changed so that fees are charged when updated to 'shipped' by the lender instead of 'received' by the borrower. A refund process is expected to be released in June 2016. Today, Tony Melvyn, OCLC Product Manager, shared some helpful information to ensure the process works smoothly.
In December 2015, OCLC's Interlibrary Loan Fee Management (IFM) changed so that fees are charged when updated to 'shipped' by the lender instead of 'received' by the borrower. A refund process is expected to be released in June 2016. Today, Tony Melvyn, OCLC Product Manager, shared some helpful information to ensure the process works smoothly:
"It is a best practice for lenders to ‘ship’ an item within WorldShare Interlibrary Loan or ILLiad only when the item is in hand, ready to be packaged and sent out to the borrowing library.
The ILL Policies Directory provides every library the ability to designate the number of days that they need to respond to a request so that items can be located and pulled off the shelf prior to shipping. The default days to respond is 4 days for both copies and loans. Any library can update their days to respond and provide separate values for copy requests vs. loan requests if desired. The available values are 1, 2, 4, 8, 12, 16 or 20 days. Updates to the Policies Directory can be made here: https://illpolicies.oclc.org/.
Please note that even though there is an ‘unship’ action currently available within ILLiad, using that action can cause problems for the actual lender who ends up filling the request. IFM does not support an item being ‘unshipped.’ This means if an ILLiad lender charges for their loan using IFM and ships it only to later ‘unship’ it, they will be credited and then debited for the IFM charges, but the lender further down the lender string who supplies the item will not receive the IFM credit.
Be kind to other lenders – only ‘ship’ when the item is in hand!"
