Cut Costs, Increase Resources with FreeShare

Posted by Patricia Devine on November 18th, 2008 Posted in: Resource Sharing & Document Delivery

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Are you facing budget cuts in your library?  FreeShare is one way to save money on document delivery costs and expand your access to resources. FreeShare is a cross-regional DOCLINE Library Group whose members agree to fill DOCLINE requests free of charge on a reciprocal basis. FreeShare participants provide free ILLs to any other FreeShare group member. There are no charges for the material, the delivery method, or the service level. The loan is totally free to the requesting library.

Any DOCLINE library in the Pacific Northwest Region (PNR) may ask to be added to the FreeShare Library Group by contacting the PNR DOCLINE coordinator, Patricia Devine.  Participation in this group is by self-selection. There is no agreement form, regional affiliation, or institutional affiliation required. DOCLINE now provides routing by Library Group, and you can place the FreeShare Library Group directly into your routing table. For best performance from the DOCLINE algorithms, you should place FreeShare into a cell in your routing table with no other libraries or library groups in the same cell.

DOCLINE will then randomly select up to 20 FreeShare libraries that are currently active, own the needed volume, provide the requested delivery method or alternative delivery methods, and provide the requested service level. DOCLINE will route the request to each of the randomly selected libraries until it is completed. By including FreeShare in your routing table, you can tap the collections and services of the over 1,400 libraries participating in FreeShare.

You may place the FreeShare Library Group into any cell in your routing table, but we recommend placing Freeshare into one of the lower cells, after the cell or cells that contains known libraries or your best borrowing partners. Then if preferred lenders cannot fill a loan, the request will route to FreeShare.

Joining FreeShare may increase a library’s requests for lending. But because of the random selection methods in DOCLINE, no individual library should be over-used. If you experience problems we can help you find a solution, or remove your library from Freeshare if necessary.

Are you ready to increase resource sharing, expand access and lower your document delivery costs?  If you would like to be added to the FreeShare Library Group or if you have any questions about FreeShare, Routing Tables, or any other DOCLINE issues, please contact Patricia Devine by email: devine@u.washington.edu, or phone 800-338-7657 or 206-543-8275.