ISO ILL
ISO ILL
The InterLibrary Loan Protocol (ISO ILL 10160/10161) was developed to provide uniform procedures for handling peer-to-peer interlibrary loan operation between two ILL systems. The standard defines a number of messages that can be sent between the requesting site and the supplying site in order for the requester to have access to different services and material that might be offered by the supplying organization.
As of the July 2019 release, Alma supports the ISO workflow also via the ISO 18626 protocol.
When a request is sent to a library this starts a new transaction. The transaction continues until the item is satisfactorily supplied and, if a loan item, satisfactorily returned, or the supplying library notifies that it cannot supply the item. Transactions may last for a few seconds or minutes, if the supplying library has electronic access to its catalogues and is supplying documents held electronically over the network, or may last for months, for example where a loaned item is renewed.
In general a transaction goes through several stages: request; failure or notification of shipping of the item; acknowledgement of receipt of the item; reminders to return loaned items; return of item or notification of lost item; acknowledgement of receipt of returned item. The standard formally divides these stages into two phases, namely the processing phase which lasts from request until either shipped notification or notification of failure to supply, followed, for loan items only, by the tracking phase.
The following diagram illustrates the workflow:
The following table summaries the technical details of the ISO ILL support in Alma:
| Status of ISO ILL Implementation | In Production |
|---|---|
| Protocol Version | 2 |
| transaction types | Simple |
| Role | Borrower, Lender |
| Transport Protocol(s) Used | Message format: APDU Character Set: Unicode/UTF-8 Transport Layer: TCP |
| Messages supported as Borrower | ILL-Request Received Returned Cancel Renew General Messages |
| Messages supported as Lender | Shipped Checked-In Answer – Unfilled Cancel Reply Renew Answer General Messages |
| Third Party Tools Used | NA |
Events Table
| Triggering Event | Initiator | Service | Behavior in the receiving application |
|---|---|---|---|
| Patron requests material that does not exist locally | Borrower | ILL Request | Request is created. Lender checks if material is available. |
| Material exists. Library is willing to supply it, and send it to the requesting library | Lender | Shipped | |
| Material does not exist, or library is not willing to supply it. | Lender | Answer unfilled | Requesting library will pass the request to a different potential supplier. |
| Material has received in the library. | Borrower | Received | |
| Material was returned by the borrowing patron. | Borrower | Returned | |
| Material is back in the lending library. | Lender | Checked-in | transaction is closed. |
| Patron cancels the request. | Borrower | Cancel | transaction is closed. Cancel reply message should be sent. |
| Patron asks to renew the request. | Borrower | Renew | Renew Answer message should be sent, indicating whether the lending library agrees to renew. |
| Staff sends a general message manually | Borrower or Lender | General message | staff should review and handle manually. |
Required and Optional Services
The following table lists required and optional services. ISO services not listed are not used by this profile. In order to communicate with Alma using ISO ILL communication, the required services must be supported:
| Service | Role | Required (R) or Optional (O) |
|---|---|---|
| ILL Request | Borrower | R |
| Shipped | Lender | R |
| Received | Borrower | R |
| Returned | Borrower | R |
| Checked-In | Lender | O |
| Answer – Unfilled | Lender | R |
| Cancel | Borrower | R |
| Cancel Reply | Lender | O |
| Renew | Borrower | O |
| Renew Answer | Lender | O |
| General Messages | Borrower and Lender | O |
The following table describes the fields which are relevant for each service:
| Service | Field | Required (R) or Optional (O) | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| protocol-version-num | R | 2 | |
| Transaction-Id | R | Unique id of the transaction and the message | |
| service-date-time | R | Date and time of the service. | |
| Aliases | – | Not supported | |
| APDUDeliveryInfo extension | O | Messages from Alma includes this extension. Messages to Alma are not forced to include this extension, however if possible it is recommend to include it. Alma uses it in order to identify the sender and receiver. | |
| transaction-type | R | 1 (Simple) | |
| ILL-Request | delivery-address | R | Address for delivering the material. This is usually the library’s address. Alma might put the requesting patron’s address if the partner supports this option (configured on the partner). |
| BillingAddress | O | Address for sending bills | |
| IllServiceType | R | (1) “loan”, (2) “copy/nonreturnable” for Electronic send 2. | |
| expiry-flag | O | Default: 3 (no expiry) | |
| item-id | R | Information regarding the requested item (including bibliographic information).
| |
| forward-flag | – | Not supported | |
| retry-flag | – | Not supported | |
| requester-note | O | Free text note | |
| Shipped | shipped-service-type | R | (1) “loan” and (2), “copy/nonreturnable” |
| date-shipped | O | Date of shipment | |
| date-due | O | Due date of the item. Relevant in case of loan. Note that it is possible to configure Alma to ignore this and use the library’s terms of use. | |
| responder-note | O | Free text note | |
| ILL-Answer | transaction-results | R | 3 (unfilled) – currently, this is the only supported option |
| UnfilledResults | R | The reason for not filling the ILL request | |
| responder-note | O | Free text note | |
| Cancel | requester-note | O | Free text note |
| Cancel-Reply | answer | R | True/False. Usually this should be TRUE. |
| responder-note | O | Free text note | |
| Renew | DesiredDueDate | O | If not supplied, the lending library will renew according its policy. |
| note | O | Free text note | |
| Renew-Answer | answer | R | True/False. |
| note | O | Free text note | |
| DateDue | O | Required if answer=True | |
| Received | date-received | R | Date of recieval |
| shipped-service-type | R | (1) “loan” and (2), “copy/nonreturnable”. | |
| requester-note | O | Free text note | |
| Returned | date-returned | R | Date of return |
| requester-note | O | Free text note | |
| Checked-in | date-checked-in | R | Date of check-in |
| responder-note | O | Free text note | |
| Message | note | R | Free text note |
Security and Privacy
User authentication and authorization is out of scope of this profile. It is assumed that the ILL and Alma applications whose interactions are described in this profile trust each other.
Required Configuration in Alma
An ILL partner of ‘ISO ILL’ type should be defined, representing the institution with which a communication should be enabled. Refer to Alma online help for more information.
Required Configuration in the ILL system integrating with Alma
- The ISO messages should include the relevant fields and information, as described above.
- The URL for which ISO messages should be sent to Alma is [Alma domain]/view/iso-ill.