With an increase in staff and post-graduate research students working from home, we wanted to investigate the desirability and feasibility of establishing a document delivery service for these customers. Between August and December 2018, we have been satisfying Inter Library Loans requests for articles which were actually available in QUB Libraries, by scanning and emailing the article directly to the requestor. In the past, we would have sent an email giving the location of the article, so this would be a vast improvement for the customer.
The pilot was very successful and we received 100% positive feedback from participants who said:
- Thanks so much for this. Brilliant service!
- Thanks very much for your help. It is a ★★★★★ I think this does the job very well but people might still want to know the details of their location in the library for say viewing colour images etc. A colour scan may be a useful idea also.
- This is perfect, thank you. I’ve also filled in the survey and, as discussed with your colleagues on the third floor, this is a valuable service.
Staff found that the increase workload did not create additional pressure for them. Library Management Team assessed a report on the pilot and the feedback from participants. The following recommendations have now been implemented:
- The Document Delivery Service is now offered by all QUB Library branches.
- The Document Delivery Service is offered to QUB staff and QUB PG Research students as standard.
- When the article has colour plates, for example, a colour scan should be considered.