[ARCHIVED] Interlibrary Loan and Document Delivery: News

IMPORTANT: GIF Project Ending in March 2018

Dear GIF Project Participants in North America and Oceania:

Thank you very much for your institution’s participation and support in the Global ILL Framework (GIF) Project, which has been fulfilling inter-library loan and document delivery needs between Japanese and North American/Oceanian libraries since 2002. 

Since the Coordinating Committee for Japanese University Libraries had decided in July 2015 that no update of NACSIS-ILL system would be made in accordance with the recent changes in ISO protocol, the Coordinating Committee established International ILL Task Force to investigate alternative ways of operation to replace the current system. In 2016/17 the Task Force seriously looked into one alternative, the Agent System employing a dedicated staff to manually input ILL transaction data on both OCLC and NACSIS-ILL systems. After reviewing the feasibility of the Agent System both from the viewpoint of the mechanism and the administration, in spring 2017 the Task Force recommended not to implement the Agent System and to entirely terminate the GIF Project in March 2018. In its hard-hitting recommendation, the Task Force cited increasing system communication errors with GIF transactions, and the availability of alternative modes of access to Japanese resources, including ILL and photoduplication services provided by the Japan’s National Diet Library (NDL) and several Japanese university libraries that use OCLC’s ILL system. Finally in summer, the Task Force’s final report (which is here in case any of you would like to read this document in Japanese)was approved by the Coordinating Committee for Japanese University Libraries.

With this event, representatives from the Japanese GIF Project team and the NCC’s ILL/DD Committee have been in close communication to plan details for future workflows for resource sharing between GIF Project participating libraries from both sides of the Pacific in anticipation of ending of the GIF system link enabled by ISO in March 2018. 

Please take a look at a rough timeline below for future schedule regarding the GIF service (more detailed timeline will be posted on a later date):

October 2017:             Detailed schedule will be shared with GIF Project participants

January 2018:              Last day (exact date not determined yet) for accepting ILL requests 

February 28, 2018:      Last day for accepting article copy requests

March 31, 2018:          Last day for updating ILL/copy transaction records

April 30, 2018:            All payment transactions will be completed   

If you have any questions and concerns regarding future planning of GIF Project, please let us know any time. We should also remind you that ILL/DD Committee will continue supporting you for all your ILL/DD needs from North American libraries even after GIF Project is terminated.  

Thank you very much for all your support.

Best regards,

Peter Bae, co-chair, ILL/DD Committee 
Toshie Marra, co-chair, ILL/DD Committee