| CV | Interloans Librarian, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
Thelma Fisher | CV | Document Delivery Librarian, University of Otago Library, New Zealand

ABSTRACT | Paper | Presentation |
Interloans Best Practice Workshop

The need for well trained and expert ILL staff has been a recurrent recommendation from recent international ILL research in Australia, the Nordic area, UK and USA.  In 2001 Tom Ruthven of the National Library of Australia presented his paper on the benchmarking study of Australian interlibrary loans and document delivery from data gathered in late 2000.  In his presentation Tom mentioned that in response to the outcomes of the study there would be a series of initiatives, including development of a training course for ILL/DD practitioners.

This course was developed and when it was offered as a satellite event to the 8th ILDS Conference in Canberra, Australia in October 2003 we, along with several colleagues from throughout New Zealand, attended.  Subsequently the New Zealand University Interloans User Group requested that the Joint Standing Committee on Interloan (JSCI) undertake a similar benchmarking study to that held in Australia, with a view to a best practice workshop based on national research being developed.

While a New Zealand benchmarking study did not eventuate the National Library of Australia made their workshop material available to the National Library of New Zealand (NLNZ) with permission to adapt it to local conditions.  The JSCI and the NLNZ decided to proceed and formed a cross-sectoral working party in July 2004 to develop a one day workshop for New Zealand, in order to share and develop ILL best practice at a regional and national level, for practitioner to management levels.

Of great importance was for the workshop, in addition to assisting libraries to improve their performance by following best practice, to help librarians to learn new, and strengthen existing, professional skills and to raise their awareness of new developments in services and technology.  A comprehensive handbook was developed for participants to take back as a workplace resource.  The modules covered were: research findings, the interloans lifecycle, automation, statistics and performance measures, bibliographic tools and sources, selection of suppliers, bibliographic search skills, two case studies of hypothetical libraries, concluding by addressing the question “Where to from here?”. 

An essential planning phase has been to evaluate the workshop.  How did workshop participants measure themselves against the interloans best practices outlined in the workshop, return to their workplace and continue that self-assessment?  The methodology and rationale used explores to what end evaluation was used, or could be used during the planning, workshop and post workshop to enhance structure, content and delivery, target audience and development of personal and institutional interloans best practice.  The role of the working party was also examined separately using a project management approach.  Evaluating such a project can also be used to inspire other areas of librarianship to develop best practice staff training initiatives and opportunities outside of, but relevant to the workplace.

This paper will showcase the story of the New Zealand workshop.  The background, preparation, process, content, training the trainers, marketing, registration, presentation, evaluation, and debriefing; the journey from personal upskilling to national upskilling.