By Katie Cohen

As an Interlibrary Loan Librarian and first time attendee at the OCLC Resource Sharing Conference, I felt the trip to Jacksonville, Florida was very rewarding. I got a refresher course in ILL basics, learned about the new ILL system called Tipasa, heard from some New Jersey presenters, and met some interesting librarians from all over the country.

Although I have been serving as ILL Librarian for several years now, I arrived early to attend the ILL 101 workshop. Although I knew about a lot of the things that the presenters discussed, one can never stop learning! I picked up a lot of great tips about borrowing, lending, assessment and copyright.

As our library is currently transitioning to Tipasa, it was very helpful to hear about experiences from those who have already made the change to the new ILL system. Quite a few sessions were dedicated to Tipasa, and many others included updates or tips about it. Librarians and OCLC employees gave great advice on things such as how to use tags, how to manage copyright in the new interface, how to use Tipasa to aid in collection management, and how to take advantage of automated processes such as automatic template notifications.

One of the biggest reactions that a presenter received was when a panelist announced that her consortia has the right to lend ebooks. Mikki Butcher, Director, ILL & Course Reserves, at James Madison University said that VIVA: The Virtual Library of Virginia negotiated their licensing agreements to allow them to lend PDFs of entire books. They have these rights from the following publishers: Brill, Taylor and Francis, Wiley, and Oxford University Press (with the latter, books must be downloaded chapter by chapter). Other conference attendees were all hopeful that they could negotiate similar terms with vendors. I think this could be an excellent opportunity for VALE to investigate.

New Jersey was represented by attendees as well as presenters and a conference planner. The College of New Jersey’s Bethany Sewell, Access Services and Reference Librarian; and David Murray, Humanities Librarian presented the session, “Historian’s Use of ILL Returnables: Reality vs. Perception of Turn-Around Time.” Sewell also presented about RapidILL as part of the panel, “Library Consortia and How They Participate in Resource Sharing.” Peter Bae, Head of Scholarly Services at Princeton University Library, was a member of the Conference Program Committee.

In addition to being pleased with the conference presentations, I felt the conference was well-organized on the whole. Registrants staying at the conference hotel received complimentary airport transportation, and the conference organized “Dine-Arounds” so that attendees could dine at a recommended Jacksonville restaurant with other conference attendees. This was a nice night out for me as I was traveling by myself! Although it was colder than most attendees anticipated, it was still nice to enjoy the tepid sun in Florida while everyone in NJ had another snow day. I hope to return to the conference in the future, and highly recommend it to other ILL librarians and staff.

Katie Cohen is the Interlibrary Loan, Reference and Instruction Librarian at Ramapo College of New Jersey. She can be reached at kcohen1@ramapo.edu.