ILL Committee Liaison Report--National Library of Canada

Philadelphia, January 2003


Library and Archives of Canada

On October 2, 2002 the Minister of Canadian Heritage announced the creation of the Library and Archives of Canada, a new agency that brings together the National Archives of Canada and the National Library of Canada. New legislation is expected in 2003 and work has begun to ensure a smooth transition to the new institution. The name of the new institution has not yet been decided.

Access Amicus

The popularity of AMICUS Web (www.nlc-bnc.ca/amicus) continues to increase. The free service provides different audiences with key functionality. The general public appreciates the research capabilities in a database of 26 million records and nearly 50 million holdings from over a thousand Canadian libraries. The educational community appreciates the ability to create bibliographies with the “View List” feature. Cataloguers and data providers use the downloading feature to extract MARC data effortlessly. Interlibrary loan areas benefit from the ILL request feature which simplifies ordering and document delivery in Canada. AMICUS Web is fast becoming a hub of interlibrary loan traffic within Canada. Over 1300 libraries and thousands of individuals subscribe to the free service which is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Cross Border shipping

In our last report in June 2002, we indicated that we were still experiencing difficulties with cross-border returns of our ILL material via UPS. New shipping return instructions to our American lending partners were being prepared at the time to alleviate this problem. Since the implementation of these new procedures for the handling of UPS shipments, we are now happy to report that we have been able to reduce cross-border fees for the return of our ILL material to a bare minimum. We thank our American partners for their cooperation in this regard. We are continuing to send out these written instructions with every ILL loan shipment to American libraries.

Book Cradle scanner for Document Delivery services

The National Library has acquired the Minolta PS7000 book cradle scanner to be used in conjunction with our Relais Document Management System. The Library hopes to use this scanner to fill loan and photocopy requests that in the past would have been rejected due to the condition of the material or because the item was housed in the rare book or preservation collection. With the Minolta scanner it will be possible to scan a fragile document and fax it or send the file as an email attachment or post it to our website.

Capital Sm@rtLibrary

The National Capital Region Library Consortium in the Ottawa - Gatineau region recently selected Fretwell Downing, Inc’s ZPORTAL software to power its Sm@rtLibrary project. The consortium is a unique mix of partners consisting of government, hospital, college, university, business, public and business libraries.

The Sm@rtLibrary project is an initiative of Sm@rtCapital; it is coordinated by the Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation and is funded by Industry Canada's Smart Communities program. The first release of Sm@rtLibrary, scheduled for February 2003, lets a user search the library catalogues of Carleton University, the Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information, the National Library Archives of Canada, the Ottawa Public Library and the University of Ottawa. Later releases will include the catalogues of other libraries within the Ottawa - Gatineau region.

VDX implementations in Ontario

Public libraries in the Southern Ontario Library Service network and college and university libraries in the Ontario Council of University Libraries network have purchased Fretwell Downing’s Virtual Document Exchange (VDX) software. VDX is a standalone product designed to manage all aspects of borrowing and lending. VDX can also be set up to handle only lending or only borrowing. VDX is ISO Protocol and IPIG Profile compliant

OpenILL Project

OpenILL is an open source ILL system that is being developed by the University of Winnipeg together with a number of partner libraries and open source developers. It will be a fully compliant ISO/IPIG interlibrary loan system and will be freely available to any institution wanting to use it. It will also be available via remote hosting for libraries lacking the technical infrastructure to support a system of this type. The initial version will run in a Cold Fusion/Java/SQLServer environment with a port to PHP/Java/PostgreSQL soon after the initial release early in 2003.

OpenILL functionality will include:

Complete web-based functionality for client and staff systems


Standard web support for all UI functions


Integrated e-mail functions (notification, broadcast, etc)


Support for IE for staff modules, all main browsers for client modules


Support for standard SQL databases


Initial version will support SQL Server


Unlimited requests


Remotely and locally hosted versions


Support for Lending and Borrowing


GODOT and ISO ILL/IPIG Profile support


Centralized institution profiles usable by all OpenILL sites


Option for internal patron database or ILS-based


Patron authentication/authorization via native ILS/EZProxy links


Automated rule-based routing and handling of requests


Resource Discovery


Z39.50-based resource discovery


Direct link to GODOT requesting


Resource Delivery


Option to deliver electronic documents and/or URL links to documents


User Support tools


Web/e-mail notification and request tracking


Centralized electronic document pick-up/repository


Citation/Link/Document management tools


Management Tools


Built-in statistical reports


Custom report generation via standard tool

The National Library is cooperating by providing a copy of its ILL Directory via FTP transfer. The data will be converted to an LDAP database for use with OpenILL and other systems.




For more information go to:
http://cybrary.uwinnipeg.ca/projects/openill/

Submitted by:

Bill Murphy


A/Director, Resource Sharing


National Library of Canada