Right Under Their Noses: Helping Patrons Identify the Resources at their Fingertips

A concern of all academic Interlibrary Loan Departments is having faculty/ staff & students request materials already owned by their home library. The Interlibrary Loan Department conducted a qualitative research study with IRB approval to explore this concern. In this session, the presenters will describe how data suggest a more streamlined approach to redirecting searches originating in the library for outside sources to assets already physically (or electronically) stored in the library. We will discuss our research process and how we partnered with other departments in the library. Our findings were useful to our Discovery Services managers and our instruction faculty.