Neal-Schuman Publishers

PRACTICAL NEW MANUAL OFFERS COST-EFFECTIVE PROCEDURES FOR LIBRARIANS NEW TO DOCUMENT DELIVERY AND INTERLIBRARY LOAN AND EFFICIENCY-BOOSTING TECHNIQUES FOR PROS

Interlibrary Loan (ILL) and document delivery services are critical parts of modern library service, but they often involve high costs and long task lists that can overwhelm busy librarians who already juggle multiple roles and tight budgets. In Document Delivery and Interlibrary Loan on a Shoestring, to be published by Neal-Schuman on November 30, 2009, author Emily Knox outlines the best procedures, time-management skills, and technologies to help professionals successfully implement or improve ILL and document delivery services.

While the manual’s nine chapters provide best practices and guidelines that will aid even the most established ILL professionals, Knox’s jargon-free, expert guidance is specifically geared toward smaller-to-medium sized libraries. She begins with the current working definitions of interlibrary loan and document delivery, and explains how to adapt existing best practices to suit a smaller institution’s needs. The next chapter offers solutions for prevalent budget, staffing, and time-management issues that often challenge smaller libraries. There is a guide to copyright law and the necessary steps for complying with borrowing and lending regulations, along with an overview of various national, state, and local codes that govern interlibrary loan, including the just-updated National Interlibrary Loan Code for the United States.

Knox then shifts the focus to policy development, with guidance for crafting interlibrary loan policies that are cost-effective, efficient for users and staff members, and preserve high customer service standards. Document Delivery and Interlibrary Loan on a Shoestring includes specific advice for streamlining lending and borrowing policy-writing and optimizing workflow. The two concluding chapters highlight different technology systems that work for libraries of all different sizes and budgets. Knox outlines comprehensive management solutions and their many benefits for libraries with larger budgets, and offers a number of highly practical alternatives for using widely available office technology and open source products to electronically receive and track ILL and document delivery transactions.

Chapters include references and related resources, and the book’s appendices feature time-saving templates for ILL forms and policy examples, along with the Interlibrary Loan Code for the United States.
Document Delivery and Interlibrary Loan on a Shoestring helps even the smallest institutions overcome budgetary constraints, limited resources and inadequate training, and provides the time-management skills and technical ingenuity that will help transform Interlibrary Loan and document delivery service into an efficient and organized operation.

Document Delivery and Interlibrary Loan on a Shoestring
ISBN: 978-1-55570-678-4 .
2009. 6 x 9. 230pp. $65.00.

About the Author
Emily Knox is a doctoral student in the Department of Library and Information Science at the School for Communication and Information at Rutgers University. She was the Associate Director and Reference Librarian at the St. Mark’s Library of the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church in New York City for five years. Knox received her received her MSLIS from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2003.

About Neal-Schuman Publishers
Neal-Schuman Publishers is a leading publisher of professional books for librarians, archivists and knowledge managers. Founded in 1976, Neal-Schuman Publishers is based in New York City, with offices in London, UK.

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