Folks at the Brown University Library have been doing some interesting stuff. I just happened to come across this while visiting there not too long ago. But they put out a new service called Easy Borrow, which provides "a single user interface for automated requesting of returnable items from multiple shared resource systems."
It's not something of great interest to public libraries unless you are part of a consortium. But it is a wonderful new service for users of academic libraries. Users only need to log in once. The automated system repeats their search in each one of the resource systems (start with Brown's own catalog) until it finds one with a copy available. If none of the other resource sharing systems have an available copy, it then goes into their ILL system ILLiad.
Users do not have to repeat their search in different catalogs/databases. Users do not have to log into different databases because they only have one single user interface they have to deal with. Plus, they don't even have to know where their materials were borrowed from, why should they!! This has made it much easier for staff also because they do not have to repeat users' search because the system is automated so it will attempt each resource before it goes into ILLiad.
Great example of integrating technologies and resources to present a wonderful, easy and transparent user experience!!
Brown is currently sharing the code in Google Code. Eventually they will host the code themselves and continue to share it with others. I wonder if the academic communities have expressed a lot of interest in this!
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