MnPALS Interlibrary Loan Goes Live!

At long last, the interlibrary loan function in the MnPALS shared catalog is now working. To order books from other libraries, you need to log in using your barcode and last name and select Gustavus as your library. Then, when you find a book at another library that you want to order, click on the ILL Request link at the top of the record. You will have to choose a "date needed by" from the calendar and check off agreement with the copyright statement, then click on "go." Finally confirm your request from the next screen.

One thing that may seem confusing : there is a form for requesting a photocopy of part of a book. You may fill that section out if you wish, but many if not most libraries prefer to loan the book rather than make a copy. And as libraries adapt to a totally new system behind the scenes, requests from other libraries may take a bit longer for the first week or so.

Online interlibrary loan forms for books and articles also have a new look.

Kudos to Kathie Martin and her student team for managing to get the new system up and running with such speed and good spirits.

The MnLINK Gateway will continue to serve as an interlibrary loan portal to public and academic libraries around the state. However, it has suddenly become necessary to enter your last name (where it calls for Pin or Password) in ALL CAPS rather than lower case letters. Why this is suddenly case sensitive is something only the gremlins know.

In other news ... congratulations to Edi Thorstensson for landing an NEH grant to bring a consultant to campus to advise us on conservation and preservation of the Church Archives, but also to help us with long-term preservation planning for the college archives, special collections, and the collection as a whole.

Some of our course reserves are being loaded on Moodle, an open-source course management system, as a pilot project. Next fall we expect all of our electronic reserves to be loaded on Moodle. Though this system has many additional courseware features, the library is only using it for reserve readings as we phase out our home-grown e-reserves system. Participating faculty don't have to use any additional Moodle features; students simply log in to find electronic readings for their courses.