Our beginnings

October 2007 Joyce Bruce from Plymouth State University sent an e-mail to NHCUC libraries proposing a "Meeting for all NH Academic Library Interlibrary Loan staff...to brainstorm with the very people who do the work on a daily basis." The hope was for "all of us forming a closer working relationship and helping each other improve our own methods of delivering information to our patrons and to each other's institutions." She proposed that for this first meeting, each of us could submit three topics that we would like to discuss-this could be anything related to ILL: software, staffing, tech support, Distance Learners, database searching… We expect this to be a good forum for answering those day-to-day questions that no one thinks to put in a manual. It also helps us work better together when we can put a face to a name, and feel we know each other. We will bring or buy our own lunches.

Jan 10, 2008 MEETING @ Plymouth State University - Our first meeting took place in the Tower room in Lamson Library at PSM with coffee and donuts starting at 9:30 and the meeting at 10:00. Joyce had supplied directions, a parking map and permit. She expected about 25 Interlibrary Loan librarians. Elaine Allard, PSM's Systems Librarian led a tour of Lamson Library and their new Information Commons Center. The day's activities ended about 3:30. We are calling ourselves the "NH Academic ILL staff."

June 16, 2008 MEETING @ Dartmouth College - Upon Michelle Lee's invitation, Joyce Bruce arranged the second meeting at Dartmouth. Michelle reserved Room 152 in the Baker-Berry Library. Hazen Allen sent directions and parking information. A few of the ILL staff from VT colleges were also invited. Following up on January's discussion about borrowing requests being affected when SAC activated Webridge and when KNM activated their SFX URL resolver, Joyce suggested we bring our ILL statistics for both borrowing and lending for the past 5 years and talk about what has affected them one way or another. What are others doing to help their Distance Education students and are any of us offering special Document Delivery services to our own patrons..faculty, staff, students..? After lunch was a tour of the library and Michelle showed us how they check out borrowed items on Millennium. At that time we were "the NHCUC interlibrary loan group."

Jan 13, 2009 MEETING @ Southern NH University - The "ILL gathering" was in the KEN ROWLEY CONFERENCE ROOM in the Shapiro Library at SNHU. Barbara Hickok sent directions and parking permits. We were invited to think about recent ILL frustrations/successes as well as some of the new things we may have recently tried. Some of the suggested discussion topics included: Setting up reciprocal lending agreements, Student employee issues – incentives and hourly rates

, Packaging and shipping issues

, Current issues regarding CLIO

, and Van delivery issues.

We started at 9 – 9:30 with coffee/tea and then spent the morning informally discussing interlibrary loan topics of general interest. There was general agreement that we should meet again in June. Lunch was at the Dining services building, adjacent to the library. The afternoon discussion ended by 3PM. There was a sign-up sheet for a list of the systems each of us use so we'll know who to call with an ILLiad, Clio or Ariel question.

Now we're calling ourselves the "NHCUC ILL people."

May 2009 Our distribution list continues to be refined. Barbara Hickok suggested that we "Reply All" with current concerns, questions, new ideas to facilitate the creation of an interesting agenda for the next "NHCUC ILL gathering." In e-mail some possible agenda items were brought up relating to ILLiad, copyright and auto-deflection.

June 2009 Linda Madden suggested adding equipment such as the scanners and their software to our list of systems: ILLiad , Clio and Ariel, and adding versions. Nancy Plimpton suggested adding the "Go to" person for each system at the various institutions. She noted the challenge of keeping the list current, as different libraries update, add, or drop systems. Linda suggested having her son Scott build a "contacts" web page, and people could send their changes to her via e-mail. Linda sent out a message "RE: NHCUC 'go to' persons" along with a file of NHCUC Interlibrary Loan representatives derived from the list made Jan 13, 2009 and asked everyone for updates. There was e-mail discussion about inviting VT Academics to our meetings.

August 2009 Scott Madden set up a couple of web pages showing the NHCUC ILL Contacts with the equipment and software systems we had on the list so far. Holly Klump offered to have the next meeting Sep 3, 2009 at Rivier from 9:30 to 2:30. One part of the day will be Scott's presentation of the sample web pages he set up so people can see what they like, what's possible, and ask questions. Links to the 2 pages were sent out for people to consider, resulting in several updates.

Sep 3 2009 MEETING @ Rivier college - This "NHCUC-ILL Meeting" was at Regina Library, Rivier College, Nashua NH. Holly Klump made all the arrangements. Discussion topics planned included statistics, workflow and making workflow more efficient. She also arranged for equipment for Scott to demonstrate the 2 sample web pages to get our preferences on design, order, format and things to include/exclude e.g., e-mail addresses. The demonstration elicited many other ideas, including having "back pages" for each institution with more details. Updated files were e-mailed to the group that night to see if it's what was wanted.

October 2009 NHCUC-ILL web pages were made available at http://tinyurl.com/NHCUC-ILL

June 16, 2010 MEETING - Sue Gagnon has arranged for our meeting to be at Geisel Library at Saint Anselm College. It was suggested that we elect a secretary so we'd have consistent minutes. The morning plans are to address questions from the members, most submitted in advance. Sue's son Denis will pick up our lunches from Panera. Sue will demonstrate her daily procedures.

Why did we name it “New England Academic ILL”?

We started out in October 2007 with just New Hampshire College & University Council (NHCUC) libraries.

Since then, we have called ourselves "NH Academic ILL staff," "the NHCUC interlibrary loan group,” The "ILL gathering," "NHCUC ILL people," and variations.

Once we welcomed Vermont into the fold, we became NH/VT Academic ILL. Then we heard that a library in Massachusetts was interested. At that point, it seemed reasonable to avoid having to keep changing the name by calling our web site “New England Academic ILL.” Thus, our web page became http://tinyurl.com/NEacademicILL