WebZ and OCLC ILL Direct Request

Contents

Introduction
What Is ILL Direct Request?
ILL Direct Request Processing Options
WebZ's Support for ILL Direct Request
Configuring WebZ to Use OCLC ILL Direct Request

Introduction

You can configure WebZ to submit ILL requests generated by SiteSearch users to OCLC's ILL Direct Request Service for the databases in which you enable this feature. This document describes WebZ's support for ILL Direct Request. It includes a brief description of ILL Direct Request, the three ILL Direct Request processing options, and a discussion of WebZ's interaction with ILL Direct Request.

WebZ also allows you to route ILL requests to a specified e-mail address. You can use both methods in a single SiteSearch environment, but you must select one of these methods for each database for which you wish to enable patron-generated ILL requests.

This document does not explain how to establish ILL Direct Request service with OCLC. For information about this and for more detailed information about ILL Direct Request, see OCLC's ILL Direct Request Service Planning Guide.

What Is ILL Direct Request?

OCLC's ILL Direct Request Service is an online feature of the OCLC Interlibrary Loan (ILL) Service. ILL Direct Request allows an external system, such as WebZ, to submit patron-generated requests to OCLC ILL with special instructions. These instructions may allow the OCLC system, not borrowing staff, to process the request and send it to the first potential lender. ILL Direct Request translates ILL requests to the standard OCLC ILL workform or record.

ILL Direct Request uses the ISO-10161 protocol (and several proprietary extensions to the protocol) to receive ILL requests. ISO-10161 is an international communications standard that permits the exchange of ILL messages among ILL systems even if they use different hardware and software. It also controls ILL transactions for both lending and borrowing activities. For more information about ISO-10161, see the Specifications and Mapping chapter in the OCLC's ILL Direct Request Service Planning Guide or the International Library Loan Application Standards Maintenance Agency (National Library of Canada) Web site. The Specifications and Mapping chapter in the OCLC's ILL Direct Request Service Planning Guide also includes a table that relates the fields on the OCLC ILL workform to fields in an ILL request sent to ILL Direct Request in ISO-10161 format.

ILL Direct Request Processing Options

Once an ILL request reaches ILL Direct Request, it can be:

• Sent directly to your OCLC ILL Review File (Direct-to-Review File processing option)
• Sent directly to potential lenders (Direct-to-Lender processing option)
• Matched against profiles of borrowing criteria for further processing before being sent to potential lenders or to your Review File (Direct-to-Profile processing option).

You can select the processing option most suited to your needs. These processing options vary in their level of automation and human intervention.

Direct-to-Review File

This option has the lowest level of automation and the highest level of human intervention, WebZ sends patron-generated ILL requests directly to your OCLC ILL Review File. Your ILL staff can review, modify, or delete the requests and then produce them through your regular OCLC ILL workflow.

Direct-to-Lender

This option has the highest level of automation and the lowest level of human intervention. Your system sends patron-generated ILL requests directly to potential lenders through the OCLC Interlibrary Library Service without review or editing by your ILL staff. With WebZ, you must set up location configuration files to add lenders to ILL requests if you use this option.

Direct-to-Profile

This option lies between the other options in its level of automation and human intervention. With this option, you define borrowing criteria using profiles that reside on the OCLC system. Once matched and processed, Direct-to-Profile processing sends requests directly to lenders or to your ILL Review File.

This option relies on the profiles that you set up ILL Direct Request to determine how to route ILL requests. Profiles serve three purposes:

• To define which requests are eligible for Direct Request processing (sending the request to a lender without staff intervention)
• To specify a holdings path (potential lenders) for requests with no lenders or insufficient lenders
• To specify a constant data record (default data) to apply to incomplete requests

You create profiles based on the needs of your site and the types of ILL requests your patrons make. The OCLC's ILL Direct Request Service Planning Guide includes a detailed discussion of the elements included in a profile and a worksheet for planning profiles.

WebZ's Support for ILL Direct Request

WebZ can support each of three ILL Direct Request options. Within WebZ itself, you:

• Specify ILL Direct Request (ISOILL) as the ILL method to use in the database configuration file for each database for which you want to enable ILL Direct Request processing.
• Provide information about processing ILL requests in the IllService.ini configuration file, such as your OCLC ILL authorization and password, your ILL Direct Request processing option, and ILL billing and shipping addresses. For the Direct-to-Lender or Direct-to-Profile options, you specify how OCLC processes a list of lenders when it contains an invalid lender symbol. For the Direct-to-Profile option, you also indicate whether ILL Direct Request can supplement the lenders supplied in an ILL request with those from the Custom Holdings path in the profile to applicable to a specific request.
• Provide information that allows WebZ to relate lender names in a database's holdings or locations field to their OCLC ILL symbols (if you are using the Direct-to-Lender option and possibly the Direct-to-Profile option).
• Optionally, provide ILL-related information about the institution associated with each patron autho in your patron authorization database (if you are using the WebZ Access component).

All this information becomes part of the JaSSI at system startup or whenever OpServe starts a new JaSSI. For more detail about this process, see ILL Configuration Files.

In the WebZ Out-of-the-Box Interface (OBI), version 1, WebZ displays an ILL request form when a patron clicks the Request (Interlibrary Loan) button on the full record display screen (<WebZ_root>/htdocs/obiv1/full.html or nffull.html, where <WebZ_root> represents the location of your WebZ environment). This form may contain default data about the patron from your system's authentication database, if available, as well as some optional defaults that you provided in IllService.ini.

The patron completes the ILL form and clicks the Submit Request button. WebZ performs basic validation checks and prompts the patron to revise the request if necessary. Then WebZ prepares an ILL request encoded in BER format, sends it to ILL Direct Request, and waits for a response. If you are using the Direct-to-Lender or Direct-to-Profile options, and have created location configuration files, WebZ attempts to add OCLC symbols for potential lender(s) to the request.

When ILL Direct Request receives the request, it performs some validation checks on the request, and then handles the request based on the ILL Direct Request processing option (Direct-to-Review File, Direct-to-Profile, or Direct-to-Lender). ILL Direct Request returns a message to WebZ to indicate how it handled the request.

WebZ displays either a confirmation screen or an error message for the patron, based on the message it receives from ILL Direct Request. WebZ's interaction with ILL Direct Request ends at this point.

Configuring WebZ to Use OCLC ILL Direct Request

You must establish ILL Direct Request Service with OCLC before attempting to use WebZ to route requests to this service. After you have done this, see the topic Configuring WebZ to Use OCLC ILL Direct Request for step-by-step instructions for setting up WebZ to interact with ILL Direct Request.

See Also

WebZ and Interlibrary Loan
ILL Configuration Files
Configuring WebZ to Use OCLC ILL Direct Request
WebZ and E-Mail ILL Requests