The Conarls Working Group of The Combined Regions is conducting a survey on the use of transport schemes for interlibrary loans. This survey will inform the group's work on improving the system as well as making it more cost effective.

If you work in interlibrary loans, Conarls would be most grateful if you would take the time to provide your answers to a short survey. You can access the survey on SurveyMonkey by clicking on the following link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/CPGZ25P. If you are unable to access the survey in this way, please contact Mike McGrath who will supply a Word equivalent. This should be saved to your computer, completed, saved again and sent as an email attachment back to Mike.

The deadline for responses is 6th November 2012. All replies will be treated in confidence although the aggregated data will be circulated to some TCR/Conarls representatives.

A paper written by TCR Chair Rob Froud and OCLC's Elisabeth Robinson has been chosen as a Highly Commended Award Winner at the Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence 2012. 'The end user enabled: the development of a UK wide resource sharing network for public libraries' was published in Interlending and Document Supply, Volume 39, Issue 4, pp. 217–220 in 2011. It describes how TCR and OCLC worked together establish UnityUK, a National Union Catalogue for UK Public Libraries, and continue to innovate with a UK National Public Library Catalogue called FABLibraries.

Due to its status as a Highly Commended paper, 'The end user enabled' is available free of charge from the Emerald website for three months.

TCR has submitted a repsonse to the DCMS Selcect Committee on Library Closures 2012 which can be seen here: /assets/Evidence%20select%20ctteeFINAL1.pdf

Harlaxton College in Grantham, Lincolnshire has joined the Conarls IRU Cost Scheme. This means they will now use the 'Conarls rate' when borrowing from or lending to the other libraries in the scheme, instead of using the higher BLDSC rate.

The full list of participants in the scheme is available on the TCR website.

Medway Council's library service has joined the Conarls IRU Cost Scheme. This means they will now use the 'Conarls rate' when borrowing from or lending to the other libraries in the scheme, instead of using the higher BLDSC rate.

The full list of participants in the scheme is available on the TCR website.

The results of a survey into the use of electronic resources in the context of inter-library loans has now been published. The survey was conducted at the end of 2010 by TCR's Conarls Working Group, the Forum for Interlending and Information Delivery (FIL) and the North West Libraries Interlending Partnership (NWLIP). The purpose was to gain an understanding of the particular issues electronic materials present in fulfilling inter-library loan requests, and the solutions already in place to overcome these issues.

The survey suggests that keeping track of the rights granted by different publishers is a major obstacle to interlending, alleviated in some cases through the use of a Digital Rights Management or Electronic Resource Management system. The full results have been published on the FIL website.

A follow-up survey is planned for the end of 2011, to determine if the picture has changed in the intervening year.

The Forum for Interlending and Information Delivery (FIL) has updated its Best Practice Guidelines with regard to items lost in transit. Previously, FIL advised that the requesting library was responsible for items on interlibrary loan, from the moment they leave the supplying library until their safe return. Now, in line with common practice and with the British Library's policy, the guidelines have been reworded as follows.

"The requester library is responsible for an item upon its receipt from a responder library until it has been received back by the responder library on its return."

For the purposes of this guideline, proof of delivery on an automated system or from the courier counts as receipt of an item.

The Best Practice Guidelines may be found in full on the FIL website.

The charge for loans between participants in the Inter-Regional Unit (IRU) cost scheme, otherwise known as the Conarls rate, will remain at £5.50 until at least July 2012.

At the May meeting of TCR's Conarls Working Group, it was decided to keep the rate frozen to encourage interlending in this time of austerity. The rate will be reviewed again in May 2012.

Harper Adams University College in Shropshire has joined the Conarls IRU Cost Scheme. This means they will now use the 'Conarls rate' when borrowing from or lending to the other libraries in the scheme, instead of using the higher BLDSC rate.

The full list of participants in the scheme is available on the TCR website.

New shared Web catalogue to boost visibility and usage of public library resources

OCLC and The Combined Regions (TCR) have announced plans to launch Britain's first freely accessible national public library union catalogue. Containing the bibliographic data from 80% of the UK's public libraries, the service will make it possible for Web users to simultaneously search 9 million bibliographic records and 50 million holdings.

Leveraging information already indexed in WorldCat, the world's largest online resource for finding library materials, this customised union catalogue will provide a view of holdings contributed by the 149 local authorities with a current full package subscription to UnityUK, the UK's only nationwide network for resource sharing.

The initiative will make bibliographic data more discoverable on the open Web. Indexing of WorldCat data through search engines such as Google and Yahoo! will vastly improve awareness of public library resources and drive significantly increased traffic back to local libraries.

Requiring no other expenditure than a current full package UnityUK subscription, the service increases visibility for public library holdings – positioning them as primary sources of information alongside other Web resources.

A recent agreement drafted by OCLC with input from The Combined Regions securing the provision of UnityUK and making important provisions for its future as a national platform for resource discovery and inter-lending paved the way for the development of this new union catalogue. Both organisations share an ambition to achieve wider access to public libraries. This agreement is a vital step towards that goal.

Commenting on the plans Rob Froud, Chair, The Combined Regions said: "We have long held the ambition to create a national union catalogue and we are delighted that we are going to achieve this in partnership with OCLC. It is one of the biggest developments for public libraries since the People's Network: it's the Big Idea that public libraries need to demonstrate their combined value, their relevance and accessibility at a time when resource sharing is more important than ever."

These are sentiments echoed by OCLC's Robin Murray, Vice President, Global Product Management: "This is a crucial time for UK public libraries. The focus on shared services and collaboration to raise the profile of UK public libraries in the midst of declining budgets has never been more important. The need to employ technology in new ways to increase visibility and usage is key."

Robin continues: "OCLC is acutely aware of the challenges facing libraries today and we are devoted to maximising the value our customers receive from existing investments. Our strategy has always been to leverage the benefits and efficiencies of scale brought about through cooperation and the aggregation of library data – this initiative is the latest manifestation of this approach – a way to provide a simple, scalable solution to a long-standing challenge faced by the public libraries in the UK."

The first phase of this project is to produce an initial 'proof of concept' which will be available for review by those UnityUK libraries with a full package subscription in March 2011.

More information is available from the OCLC Web site.