Ariel usage

[Melaine Forsburg]

Hi - I have a few quick questions re: Ariel -

Why do institutions who have Ariel still send articles (which
are regular length, nothing fancy) through the mail to locations
who also have Ariel? Why aren't these articles being scanned?
Unless I see a posting that Ariel is down at a location, shouldn't
I be able to expect that an article requested be sent via Ariel?

I have our Ariel address listed in the borrowing notes, and also
add an extra note to the location field, which is very close the
the article field.

Am I doing something wrong here? We have had Ariel up and
running (sending and receiving) since September 3rd. It took
a year to get it and I really would like to use it more.
I have changed the way I request articles - instead of going
to a close lender without Ariel, I will go to a lender, which may
be further away, but who has Ariel. And many still come via the mail
from these places.

I have to keep track of Ariel use and already have been asked why it
is not being used more. Could anyone
who has Ariel give me a reason? I'm thinking it could just be
that places are not used to us having Ariel, but perhaps there are
other reasons I haven't thought of. I would appreciate any help
to my direct e-mail address.

Thanks!!

Melaine C. Forsburg
Document Delivery/Reference Librarian
Iona College (VXI)

PS I did try to post this to ARIE-L but it never reached the actual
list, not yet anyway - if it does sorry for the duplication.

[ly...@creighton.edu]

Actually I've wondered about this myself. As I said in a previous post, we
ARIEL what we can. It saves us money for postage and phone. Why more
institutions who have ARIEL but don't, I don't know. As one person stated,
they may be too overwhelmed with requests to send them all out ARIEL. Or
they may be having technical difficulties. Another reason I've heard is
understaffed. Still it is a bit frustrating especially if you want it rush
and specify to the same. I've had times when I've needed an article from
an ARIEL library rush. I'll put it on OCLC, fax a copy, ARIEL a copy and
STILL GET IT IN THE MAIL!!!! Be assured, we try not to do this. Well
enough of the ranting.
Lynn Schneiderman
Creighton University
Reinert/Alumni Library - ILL [OCA}
Omaha, NE
ly...@creighton.edu

[Louanne Brown]

Some locations just do not want to take the time to fit the scanning into their
daily schedule. Or they cant make the necessary changes to fit it in. We are
lucky to have our periodicals dept copying the articles so all we have to do is
put it on the auto feeder and walk away. We now have the new epic scanner and
software and will not be using paper copies anymore. We can scan and transfer
to disc and transmit via ariel. We have had to keep track of who sends to us
via ariel. We only ariel to locations who ariel to us or specifically ask us
to send ariel. More and more locations are getting ariel. I would bet that
only about half of them are using it on a regular basis.

Hope this answers your question

Louanne Western Illinois Univ.

[Pamela Morgan]

It seems that most people who are commenting on this thread are those who
use Ariel for everything, as opposed to those who are not explaining why
they don't.

Like others who have commented, our preference is for documents to be
sent via Ariel. Most places that we deal with also seem to prefer Ariel.
As has been said already, it saves postage charges, fax charges, and even
general costs for stationary such as paper and envelopes. I also don't see
understaffing as being the problem ... does it take more staff to
photocopy and mail than it does to Ariel?

Maybe we're just blessed by being in a university setting and being able
to hire students on work grants. But the only change if we didn't have
students would be a slower turn-around time (unless we could convince
administration to hire more permanent staff in this period of downsizing).
It would not lessen our use of Ariel.

We have one student assistant who is dedicated to Ariel. He spends his
entire time pulling journals from the shelves, scanning them, and
reshelving the journals. He also checks incoming Ariel documents to ensure
they are complete and legible, before passing them on to regular staff.
Ariel alone keeps him quite busy. Regular staff only work with Ariel if
the student is not in on a particular day. Although our scanner has a
document feeder, we removed it. We scan all journals directly. It's as
fast as the photocopier now that we've upgraded our scanner (Fujitsu
M3097G : 30+ ppm - the student loves it!). We have another student
assistant who does nothing but photocopy. All incoming requests are sorted
into Ariel and non-Ariel, and handed off to the students.

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Pamela Morgan phone: (709)-737-6624
Systems Librarian fax: (709)-737-6866
Health Sciences Library envoy: nfsmm.ill
Memorial University of Newfoundland email: pmo...@morgan.ucs.mun.ca
St. John's, Nfld. A1B 3V6
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