As an interlibrary loan user here at The University of Alabama, I can attest to how well the service works. But while our interlibrary loan service works very quickly and with a minimum of hassle, some elements of the website design and functionality have been in need of an update. We’ve begun the process of working with Cornelia Davis and Interlibrary Loan staff to implement those updates here in the last month.
Our first step toward improving The University of Alabama Interlibrary Loan web presence was to make the emails users received clearer. Information from a table in ILLiad (the software we use to handle interlibrary loan requests) that stores the interlibrary loan URL and email address wasn’t actually making its way into the email new users got when they registered. Along similar lines, the method by which users would be notified of status changes in their interlibrary loan requests wasn’t appearing in the registration email, either. Some of the language users encountered in the registration email was also a little user-unfriendly — for instance, “Thank you for logging into illserver” was the first line of the email. Using interlibrary loan for the first time can be an intimidating experience for anyone, and we hope that fixing these elements of the registration email will do a little bit to help convince patrons that interlibrary loan isn’t something to be intimidated by.
Our larger project is to redesign the ILLiad site to closely resemble the new library website. Navigating through different library silos — the catalog, our discovery layer Scout, the databases page, our library guides, and ILLiad — can make the process of using the library website disorienting, and we hope that bringing the ILLiad design closer to the library website design will make both ILLiad use and library website use more user-friendly. Even small things, like adding University of Alabama branding more prominently to the ILLiad page, will hopefully help to reassure users that they are, indeed, in the right place when they first access our ILLiad site.
We’ll make sure to share updates once the ILLiad redesign’s far along enough to be ready for feedback.