A couple of weeks ago (June 1, to be precise) the 400,000^th request was processed in our ILLiad ILL system. We are also happy to report that it was requested, processed and delivered to the requester, all in less than half an hour!

This milestone is meaningful to us in the library because it demonstrates not only just how fast ILL can work, but also demonstrates just how many transactions we work on every day, each one important to someone in the GC and/or larger academic community.

We started using the ILLiad ILL system in September of 2003. Since then, we’ve worked on about 100,000 borrowing and lending requests every three years. (Before then, we also provided ILL services…using ILLiad’s efficiencies, however, we have been able to raise request limits and handle more and more requests through the years.)

We keep patron information confidential, so we can’t tell you who ordered the item, but we can tell you that it was an article from the journal Food & Foodways, titled “Mapping Men On to the Menu: Masculinities and Food.” (While it’s not uncommon for us to get journal articles within an hour, we never get books that quickly, since they need to be shipped.)

And, speaking of patron request confidentiality, next semester we will begin a project to disassociate the titles of ILL requests from your patron records in ILLiad. (This is already done in our circulation system for CUNY books.)

What this means is that you will no longer see older, completed  requests in your ILLiad account. (You can do so for now, though, by going to the GC Library ILL page and then clicking under View> All Requests or View> Request History.)

If you do want to keep this information, please stay tuned to this blog and we will share how you can get a list of all your requests soon.

Meanwhile, we hope you continue to use ILL and find it useful. We are happy to help you in any way we can – just contact us at ill@gc.cuny.edu.