One of the goals of the WorldCat Local Illinois pilot (the “Statewide Discovery Toolkit” LSTA grant project) is to examine how a home delivery option might be received in Illinois.

To evaluate this service, the Illinois WorldCat pilot will be conducting a three month test of home delivery with OCLC’s WorldCat Direct program, an interlibrary loan service for libraries that wish to offer rapid delivery of books to their patrons. The pilot is designed to analyze the impact and interest of direct delivery with libraries and library users and to evaluate customer satisfaction with the service.

Patrons, from participating pilot libraries, who wish to try the WorldCat Direct option will begin the process by requesting a title through the WorldCat Resource Sharing interface. If the book is available in its inventory, the supplier for this pilot program (Better World Books), will then mail the book directly to the patron’s home address. Later, the patron either returns the book by mail using a prepaid envelope or buys the book directly from the supplier.

Because books are mailed directly to patrons, borrowing libraries save staff time processing requests which can be handled by this service. Delivery tends to be faster than traditional interlibrary loan since the book supplier guarantees a response to ILL requests within 2 days and mails books directly to patrons. The longer loan period of 30 days on all materials also makes this an exciting new option for resource sharing.

Beginning July, 1, 2008, the following libraries will be testing the WorldCat Direct service:

• Champaign Public Library
• Des Plaines Public Library
• Edwardsville Public Library
• Hoopeston Public Library
• Lewis & Clark Library System
• Lincoln Library
• Lincoln Trail Libraries System
• University of Illinois @ Chicago
• University of Illinois @ Springfield

For more information about this project, contact WorldCat Local Project Coordinator Laurie Bartolini.