RapidILL will continue to serve our customers and will operate as a flexible and collaborative solution. We will also be working with Ex Libris on a new resource sharing platform that will integrate aspects of Project Bedrock, a resource sharing service that the RapidILL team began developing in 2018.
RapidILL is a unique resource sharing system that was designed by the Interlibrary Loan staff at Colorado State University Libraries.
Following a devastating flood in July of 1997, RapidILL was developed to provide very fast, cost effective article requesting and delivery through Interlibrary Loan. RapidILL was designed by Interlibrary Loan staff for Interlibrary Loan staff.
RapidILLa has 4 features that set it apart from other resource sharing systems.
RapidILL is composed of groups of libraries referred to as 'pods'. Pods are created to support peer or consortium resource sharing.
Rapid's Academic E pod
is home to sites listed in the Carnegie Foundation's "Carnegie
Classification of Institutions of Higher Education" as 'Very High' (RU/VH)
or 'High' (RU/H) research activity universities.
Rapid's Academic I pod
is home to libraries listed in Carnegie Foundation's "Carnegie
Classification of Institutions of Higher Education" as DRU:
Doctoral/Research Universities.
The Academic M pod is
designed for libraries listed in Carnegie Foundation's "Classification of
Institutions of Higher Education" document as 'Large' (L) Master's degree
granting institutions.
The COSMO pod is open
to all Rapid libraries and is one of the most popular pods.
ARL: open to members
of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) consortium and non-U.S.
libraries with equivalent academic activities and library collections
Atlantic: an open
regional pod limited to the Northeast, Middle Atlantic and South Atlantic, as
defined by the U.S. Census Bureau.
RapidR (Returnables) participation in this pod requires a 16-week loan
period
Australia and New
Zealand: open to academic libraries in Australia and New Zealnd
ASERL: open to members
of the Association of Southeastern Research Libraries consortium (ASERL)
BLC: open to members
of the Boston Library Consortium (BLC)
California: open to CA
academic libraries that are eligible for at least one of the Academic Pods
ConnectNY: open to
members of the ConnectNY consortium
EAST: open to members
of the Eastern Academic Scholar’s Trust (EAST) partnership
Great Northern: an
open regional pod limited to the Northeast, Middle Atlantic and East North
Central (Great Lakes), as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau. RapidR (Returnables) participation in this
pod requires a 16-week loan period
JULAC: open to members
of the Joint University Librarians Advisory Committee (JULAC)
Maryland: open to
academic libraries in the state of Maryland
Medical: open to
institutions with a medical branch library, or institutions that support an
accredited medical, veterinary, or dental 4-year professional program (see list
of AVMA, AAMC, and Commission on Dental Accreditation accredited programs)
Michigan: open to
academic libraries in the state of Michigan
New England: open to
academic libraries in the New England region. RapidR (Returnables)
participation in this pod requires a 16-week loan period
Oberlin: open to
members of the Oberlin Group of Libraries consortium
PALCI: open to members
of the Pennsylvania Academic Library Consortium (PALCI)
Phoenix: open to libraries
of the Oberlin 17
Prospector: open to
members of the Prospector group in Colorado and Wyoming
SCELC: open to academic
libraries in the Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium (SCELC)
SECAC: open to members
of the SECAC (Southeastern) library organization
Taiwan: open to
academic libraries in Taiwan
University of
Wisconsin: open to campus libraries in the University of Wisconsin system
VALE: open to members of the Virtual Academic Library Environment of New Jersey (VALE)
We have participating libraries all over the world.
Please contact Rapid staff for a list of current participants.
Yes! Your library is welcome to join all pods for which it meets the membership requirements and service expectations. There is no additional charge for multiple pod participation.
Participating in multiple pods is a free and easy way to expand your RapidILL resource sharing network.
Each library chooses which, if any, document suppliers to include in its Rapid supply line. This decision is encompassing and is not tailored to individual articles. Document suppliers are held to the same service expectation as other Rapid libraries.
The Center for Research Libraries, Linda Hall Library and Reprints Desk.
Yes! Rapid works with all of the major Interlibrary Loan management software packages including Clio, ILLiad, RelaisILL and Tipasa. No ILL management software? No problem, Rapid will work for you, too.
Rapid is ISO and XML compatible and performs automatic load leveling.
The majority of RapidILL's cost savings are attributed to savings in staff time. For example, Rapid automates many borrowing tasks such as selecting lenders and verifying holdings and locations. In addition, Rapid now offers unmediated borrowing. After copyright clearance is completed, unmediated borrowing eliminates all staff intervention in sending requests. Your patrons' requests are sent into Rapid even as the ILL staff sleeps!
Lending staff benefit by receiving requests only for material your library owns, and your library's local call number and library location are embedded in each request. In addition, the RapidILL request number and borrowing library's Odyssey IP address are barcoded for fast and accurate updating.
RapidILL is the only system offering Easy-Lending! Easy-Lending frees staff to handle more complex task while Rapid automatically runs borrowing requests against a uniquely designed database of over 50 million open access articles. When a match is made the article is automatically sent to your library. There is no request to print, no pulling material from the shelf, no scanning, updating or reshelving. There is no staff intervention. The turnaround time for Easy Lending requests is 3-5 minutes!
Other savings are realized because there are: no searching or transactions charges within the Rapid system, and because of Rapid's reciprocal lending policy, there are no invoicing costs.
The Rapid database is unique in several ways.
The RapidILL system automatically searches the database for you. Once you've submitted your borrowing request, all of the searching and sending is done for you automatically by the RapidILL system.
There are several required fields to be supplied to the programming team. For example, journal title, ISSN and/or OCLC number, years held, etc. These fields are easily gleaned from your catalog and Rapid staff is available to answer questions.
It is very important that your library supplies all of your journal holdings, including electronic journals, for inclusion in the Rapid database.
Ejournals, or any other holdings, from which your library is unable to provide material can easily be blocked in the Rapid database. Blocking allows accurate identification of local holdings, but blocks requests for that material. You determine what your library can or cannot supply from. Blocking can be done by call number, standard number, library location, etc. Simply tell the Rapid staff what material is to be blocked and we take care of it for you.
Rapid staff is available and happy to answer your holdings questions at any time.
Absolutely! RapidILL is completely system neutral and works independently of your integrated library system. It doesn’t matter if your library uses Voyager, III, Dynix, etc., Rapid will work for you.
Each month RapidILL automatically posts your library’s Rapid statistics. Statistics include the number of requests submitted, number and percentage filled/unfilled, and the turnaround time for filled/unfilled. For easy comparison your statistics are posted next to the system average of the pods in which you participate. Statistics are displayed in table and spreadsheet formats and can be reviewed down to the article title level.
In addition, Rapid provides an informational Collection management function that returns the total number of requests your library queried, the number of those requests that matched against the Rapid database, the number of unmatched requests, and the number of requests identified as being for material held in your library’s collection. The Collection Management function can also return a list of the journal titles you supplied to other Rapid sites. The timeframe for Collection management information is self selected and you can easily access the information at any time.
You continue to produce any other reports, including copyright, as you do now.
RapidILL is transparent to your users; there is nothing new for them to learn or do. They will continue to make their ILL requests as they do now.
Since your patrons will continue to make their requests through your current system, RapidILL doesn’t authenticate. You’ve already done that!
Rapid training is done in two 60 minute web sessions. In addition, the Rapid user manuals are available online, and Rapid staff is happy to answer questions any time.
Rapid participants agree to provide 24 hour turnaround time (Monday-Friday) for lending requests. This is described as:
RapidX is the most innovative development in resource sharing in years. Conceived and developed by the Rapid team, we are proud to offer RapidX to our users.
RapidX eliminates the need for libraries to use Odyssey for electronic delivery or receipt of incoming articles. If a library has the ability to create a .pdf, .tif or .tiff file in article request fulfillment, they will be able to easily deliver that article to any other Rapid site. In addition, the need for libraries to run Odyssey workstations is eliminated.
Using RapidX libraries simply upload the scanned article to the Rapid routing service. The Rapid system will update the request in Rapid to “filled” and send the article to the borrowing library using their preferred receiving method whether it be via Odyssey, Relais or as a web-post.
Alternate delivery options such as FTP drop off and email are in development.
There is no additional cost for RapidX.
The Rapid system runs several listservs. Each consortium pod has its own Rapid list, while the ARL, Academic E and Academic I pods share the Rapid-L listserv. All of the lists are monitored and maintained by Rapid staff. The Rapid-L list is open to the public.
To subscribe to the Rapid listserv:
(To unsubscribe, follow the instructions above, but substitute the word unsubscribe for subscribe.)
If you are a Rapid member, login and use our Email List Subscription management page.
That’s an easy question and it has been an almost universal issue. The most difficult aspect of RapidILL for people to understand is: “That’s really all there is.” RapidILL is so simple to install and use that most libraries keep waiting for ‘the other shoe to drop’ expecting the process to be difficult or cumbersome when it simply is not.
Contact the Rapid team at: RapidILL@exlibrisgroup.com.
Also remember to visit our website at Rapid.ExlibrisGroup.com for announcements and updated information.