Prevent multiple requests from a same borrowing library within a short period of time
Within a same day, we sometimes receive (in Alma) several RapidILL requests coming from a same institution for a same book or journal issue (native electronic materials or scans from physical materials): usually one request per book chapter, one request per article, etc., but sometimes, some of these requests are for multiple chapters or significant portions of a work. We assume that in most cases, these multiple requests come from a same requester, associated to the borrowing library.
In addition to copyright issues that multiple request raise, it is unreasonable to expect a lending library to expend spending a lot of time to scan significant portions of a work.
We don’t expect any systematic mediation from borrowing libraries. This would increase the turnaround time, make the process heavier and slower for end-users and be in contradiction with encouraged integrations like Alma/RapidILL and Alma/Rapido. Instead, we would like lending libraries to have the possibility to limit the number of requests they receive from a same borrowing library for a same book or journal issue within a given (short) period of time.
Example of configuration: “Maximum XX requests in YY hours for a same book or journal issue from a same borrowing library”, where ‘XX’ and ‘YY’ would be numeric values to select from a drop-down list.
Possible values for XX and YY should be defined in collaboration with the RapidILL and Rapido WGs.
In case the values for XX or YY would be reached:
1) Any new request matching the limits should be assigned to another lending institution that owns the requested material.
2) The borrowing library should be informed that there is a risk of multiple requests from a same requester. The library could reach the requester, explain the resulting copyright issues and/or decide if possible to acquire the highly demanded material.
3) If no other library can provide the material, request should be cancelled and associated with a new ‘Request Cancellation Reason’ code in Alma. It is important that Resource Sharing requests that would be cancelled for such reasons explain the requester that requesting a too large part of a journal issue or book is not without consequences or risks.
François Renaville
shared this idea
This is in development as part of the 2024 NERS enhancement process: 8530 (Prevent multiple requests from a same borrowing library within a short period of time)
Thanks!
-Mike
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Laurence Lockton
commented
Similarly we'd like more flexibility in the Digitization and Copyright Rules to be able to block borrowing requests for multiple digital chapters from the same book so we can convert it to a request for the whole physical book. It seems that for borrowing requests, the rules only really support the CONTU Guidelines Rule of Five. The Rapido copyright rules has a "Number of Requests Per User on Specific Resource" parameter, which sounds useful if it was in the Alma rules.
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Peta Hopkins commented
On the converse side - we had a situation where a cohort of students undertaking an assignment (on how to do literature searching) on the same topic all individually submitted a request for the same article. Since this article was only held by one RapidILL partner they received a bunch of requests from us - and we had no idea until they contacted us about possible © infringement. They assumed all requests were by one person infringing copyright, but that was not the case.
Nevertheless, it would have been a pain for them to process 11 requests for the same thing from a single partner in just a couple of days.
As the requesting library, we would have liked an alert that there was a run on requests for the same article so we could intervene before our partner was inundated.
A method for delivering the already-supplied file for subsequent requesters could have saved some time all round.
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Manu Schwendener commented
Same for Rapido, please