| What is RapidILL? |
 RapidILL is a unique resource
sharing system that was designed by the Interlibrary Loan staff at Colorado State
University Libraries.
Following a devastating flood in July of 1997, RapidILL was developed to provide very fast cost effective article requesting and delivery through Interlibrary Loan. RapidILL was designed by Interlibrary Loan staff for Interlibrary Loan staff. |
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| What libraries currently participate in Rapid? |
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Please contact Rapid
staff at RapidStaff@RapidILL.org for
a list of current participants
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What makes RapidILL unique? |
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RapidILL has 4 features that set it apart from other resource sharing
systems.
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| What is a Rapid pod? |
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RapidILL is composed
of groups of libraries referred to as ‘pods.’ Pods are created to support peer or
consortium resource sharing.
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| How are the pods divided? |
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The ARL pod is exclusive to ARL libraries.
The Academic M pod is designed for libraries listed in the Carnegie
Foundation’s “Classification of Institutions of Higher Education” document as ‘Large’
(L) Master’s degree granting institutions. The ASERL, Boston Library Consortium, ConnectNY, JULAC, Oberlin, PALCI, Prospector, SECAC and Taiwan pods are private pods open only to libraries participating in those groups. |
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| Can my library belong to more than one RapidILL pod? |
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Yes! Your library
is welcome to join all pods for which it meets the membership requirements and service
expectations. There is no additional charge for multiple pod participation.
Participating in multiple pods is a free and easy way to expand your RapidILL resource sharing network. |
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| How does the Document Supplier pod work? |
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Each library chooses
which, if any, document suppliers to include in its Rapid supply line. This decision
is encompassing and is not tailored to individual articles. Document suppliers are
held to the same service expectation as other Rapid libraries.
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| What vendors participate in RapidILL’s Document Supplier pod? |
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The Center for Research
Libraries, CISTI and Linda Hall Library are Rapid sites. Linda Hall Library supplies
material to Rapid libraries at a reduced cost.
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| Will RapidILL work with my Interlibrary Loan management system? |
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Yes! Rapid works
with all of the major Interlibrary Loan management software packages including Clio,
ILLiad, and Relais. No ILL management software? No problem, Rapid will work for
you, too.
Rapid is ISO and XML compatible and performs automatic load leveling. |
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| How will RapidILL save my library money? |
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The majority of
RapidILL’s cost savings are attributed to savings in staff time. For example, Rapid
automates many borrowing tasks such as selecting lenders and verifying holdings
and locations. In addition, Rapid now offers unmediated borrowing. After copyright
clearance is completed, unmediated borrowing eliminates all staff intervention in
sending requests. Your patrons’ requests are sent into Rapid even as the ILL staff
sleeps!
Lending staff benefit by receiving requests only for material your library owns, and your library’s local call number and library location are embedded in each request. In addition, the RapidILL request number and borrowing library’s Ariel IP address are barcoded for fast and accurate updating. RapidILL is the only system offering Easy-Lending! Easy-Lending frees staff to handle more complex task while Rapid automatically runs borrowing requests against a uniquely designed database of over 3 million open access articles. When a match is made the article is automatically sent to your library. There is no request to print, no pulling material from the shelf, no scanning, updating or reshelving. There is no staff intervention. The turnaround time for Easy Lending requests is 3-5 minutes! Other savings are realized because there are: no searching or transactions charges within the Rapid system, and because of Rapid’s reciprocal lending policy, there are no invoicing costs. |
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| What makes the RapidILL database unique? |
The Rapid database
is unique in several ways.
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| I understand that RapidILL has its own database, but I don’t understand how to search it: title? keyword? And how are the holdings displayed? |
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The RapidILL system
automatically searches the database for you. You simply call the RapidILL client
with one keystroke*. All of the searching and sending is done for you. *Unmediated
borrowing eliminates this keystroke.
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| What bibliographic information do we need to supply to the RapidILL database? |
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There are several
required fields to be supplied to the programming team. For example, journal title,
ISSN and/or OCLC number, years held, etc. These fields are easily gleaned from your
catalog and Rapid staff is available to answer questions.
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| How are holdings for electronic journals handled? |
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It is very important
that your library supplies all of your journal holdings, including electronic journals,
for inclusion in the Rapid database.
Ejournals, or any other holdings, from which your library is unable to provide material can easily be blocked in the Rapid database. Blocking allows accurate identification of local holdings, but blocks requests for that material. You determine what your library can or cannot supply from. Blocking can be done by call number, standard number, library location, etc. Simply tell the Rapid staff what material is to be blocked and we take care of it for you. Rapid staff is available and happy to answer your holdings questions at any time. |
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| Will RapidILL work with our Voyager system? |
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Absolutely! RapidILL
is completely system neutral and works independently of your integrated library
system. It doesn’t matter if your library uses Voyager, III, Dynix, etc., Rapid
will work for you.
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| What types of reports does RapidILL compile and how difficult are they to generate? |
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Each month RapidILL
automatically posts your library’s Rapid statistics. Statistics include the number
of requests submitted, number and percentage filled/unfilled, and the turnaround
time for filled/unfilled. For easy comparison your statistics are posted next to
the system average of the pods in which you participate. Statistics are displayed
in table and spreadsheet formats and can be reviewed down to the article title level.
In addition, Rapid provides an informational Collection management function that returns the total number of requests your library queried, the number of those requests that matched against the Rapid database, the number of unmatched requests, and the number of requests identified as being for material held in your library’s collection. The Collection Management function can also return a list of the journal titles you supplied to other Rapid sites. The timeframe for Collection management information is self selected and you can easily access the information at any time. You continue to produce any other reports, including copyright, as you do now. |
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| What features will our patrons see in RapidILL? |
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RapidILL is transparent
to your users; there is nothing new for them to learn or do. They will continue
to make their ILL requests as they do now.
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| How does Rapid authenticate users? |
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Since your patrons
will continue to make their requests through your current system, RapidILL doesn’t
authenticate. You’ve already done that!
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| RapidILL looks easy to use. How is staff trained? |
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Rapid training is
done in two 60 minute phone calls. In addition, the Rapid user manual is available
online, and Rapid staff is happy to answer questions any time.
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| What is the turnaround time of a typical Rapid request? |
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Rapid participants
agree to provide 24 hour turnaround time (Monday-Friday) for lending requests. This
is described as: 1) locating and filling a request within 24 hours of receipt and,
2) updating to unfilled or bad citation within 24 hours when a item cannot be located
on the first retrieval attempt. Easy-Lending requests are usually filled within
5 minutes.
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| What is RapidX? |
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RapidX is the most innovative development in resource sharing in years. Conceived
and developed by the Rapid team, we are proud to offer RapidX to our users.
RapidX eliminates the need for libraries to use Ariel or Odyssey for electronic
delivery or receipt of incoming articles. If a library has the ability to create
a .pdf, .tif or .tiff file in article request fulfillment, they will be able to
easily deliver that article to any other Rapid site. In addition, the need for libraries
to run both Ariel and Odyssey workstations is eliminated.
Using RapidX libraries simply upload the scanned article to the Rapid routing service.
The Rapid system will update the request in Rapid to “filled” and send the article
to the borrowing library using their preferred receiving method whether it be via
Ariel, Odyssey, Relais or as a web-post. There is no additional cost for RapidX |
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| How are RapidILL sites kept up-to-date or communicate with one another? |
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The Rapid system
runs several listservs. Each consortium pod has its own Rapid list, while the ARL,
Academic E and Academic I pods share the Rapid-L listserv. All of the lists are
monitored and maintained by Rapid staff. The Rapid-L list is open to the public.
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| What is the Rapid listserv address and how do I subscribe? |
To subscribe to
the Rapid listserv:
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| What would you say is the most difficult thing for libraries to understand about RapidILL? |
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That’s an easy question
and it has been an almost universal issue. The most difficult aspect of RapidILL
for people to understand is: “That’s really all there is.” RapidILL is so simple
to install and use that most libraries keep waiting for ‘the other shoe to drop’
expecting the process to be difficult or cumbersome when it simply is not.
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| How can I get more information about RapidILL? |
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Contact the Rapid
team at: RapidStaff@RapidILL.org. Also
remember to visit our website at: http://RapidILL.org
for announcements and updated information.
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