Home » CUNY Catalog » Best Practice when Setting up ILL Accounts in Aleph

Help!

Problem? Check out the OLS Knowledge Base or open a ticket by emailing support@cuny-ols.libanswers.com.

Best Practice when Setting up ILL Accounts in Aleph

The best practice when setting up ILL accounts in Aleph is to set up individual accounts (patron status “32.ILL”) for individual ILL borrowers. Having all ILL loans go out under one individual account is not a good practice for several reasons. For example, it is not technically possible in Aleph for a single account to have unlimited loans. There are several advantages to individual accounts:

  • ILL borrowers (the libraries making the request, not their patrons) would receive all patron notices and billing for un-returned items
  • Borrowing Libraries would have a “bill” or lost materials notices to hand their patrons
  • The notices can be targeted to a specific individuals at the borrowing organizations, for better communication
  • Fewer ILL loans to the same account means one is less likely to hit a ‘limit’
  • Several CUNY libraries may lend to the SAME borrower, but only one account is maintained. The work is thus distributed.

You can get more information, including a sample list of such accounts already set up in Aleph, on the OLS Support Site.


2 Comments

  1. Many CUNY libraries do not use ILLiad. They need a way to track lending.

    CUNY libraries already share patrons. Aleph is able to facilitate one CUNY library offering a borrower a different level of privileges than another CUNY library.

    Libraries do not always use software the same way. Those that use ILLiad can add the primary ILLiad ID number into Aleph, or not, as a library thinks best.

    Let’s please let libraries consider these ideas and determine which methods best fit their workflows.

    [Reply]

  2. There are also reasons why this is not best practice, especially for libraries that use ILLiad…ILLiad handles all emails to borrowing library and we dont want to duplicate these…invoices for lost items are rare but easy to create…if we share borrower records, what happens if one library wants to block a borrowing library but others do not…we can share more details if anyone is interested…I just want to let people know! Thanks for starting the discussion, Saad!

    [Reply]

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *