Comments on: Tracking ILL Requests

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 13:21:51 +0000

@Graeme: Perhaps I’m lucky, but my library (Cuyahoga County in Ohio) does this. I currently see that I am “70 of 106 holds” for one of my items. It would be nice if they added the total number of copies too, but I’m pretty happy with this. Looks like they use the WebPAC Pro software.

By: Graeme Williams

Graeme Williams — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 16:27:54 +0000

This *is* a great idea. It would be also be good if you could see where you are in a hold queue: “You are 12th of 54 requests for 4 copies” is a lot more informative than “54 requests for 4 copies”.

Another thing I’d like is a single interface to the consortium ILL, the statewide ILL (the Mass. Virtual Catalog) and whatever fell mechanism reference librarians use when you fill out a paper ILL request.

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 19:19:48 +0000

I’d never heard of iShip. Looks cool, but of course, you can use The Google as well. Just punch in any UPS, USPS, FexEd, or whatever tracking number and it’ll take you to the tracking page.

I also like BoxOh. You can get a Google Map of the location of the package. (Not the actual path, but the stops it took.) And an RSS feed for the package.

Examples:
http://boxoh.com/?t=1ZR1579V0337185546
http://boxoh.com/?rss=1&t=1ZR1579V0337185546

As a guy who likes to have that kind of detail in my package shipments, I’d love to see something like that for my library requests as well.

By: M Wms

M Wms — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 17:08:50 +0000

As a patron, I LOVE the ILL tracking idea. My locality either shows a blank check box beside the item I’ve ILL’d or it says “in transit.” Some “in transits” appear the next day, some take weeks, so I can’t base my reading plans on this notation. And, yes, I make reading plans! Hope you can get this feature included in your consortium’s system.