Library clips

I’ve started doing document delivery as part of my job, and have a need to formalise my paperwork and track the workflow of all my orders.

At the moment I use a spreadsheet to track all my document deliveries for my clients, although the actual citations are not listed in excel as it would take up too much space…so the clients name has a hyperlink to a word document (one for each client), this is a place to list all the citations. I suppose I could bookmark (via insert hyperlink-bookmark) all the citations in word and hyperlink them to the order numbers from excel (instead of using the requestors name).

I’m yet to read much literature on document delivery systems but I thought of a crazy idea.

Use Furl to track your document delivery list for your clients…as well as being a searchable archive of all the company’s requests.
(although there wouldn’t be any subject tags as my tags would be defining other facets).

–FILLING DETAILS IN THE PROMPT BOX AT THE TIME OF BOOKMARKING–

TITLE

Citation
(Connotea would be good for this, as it autodiscovers citations from select publishers)

URL

TAGS

• Project name

Project my client is working on

• Business Unit

Clients business unit name

• Client name

Name

• Summary - new OR sent OR received OR complete OR rejected OR 2nd send OR cancelled

Change these tags as you go through the process

• Source – EXT OR INT

Internal is a document sourced within the company itself
External is using a document delivery service or external provider

• Type – ILL OR DD

Inter-Library Loan
Document Delivery

• Supplier

Eg. CISTI OR Infotrieve OR etc..

KEYWORD
(Can’t use order no. as a tag as there are too many)

Order no.

COMMENTS
(Easier with Connotea)
(This records a history of your delivery process)

Also note the order no. here
Urgency
Date requested (date is marked anyway at the time of bookmarking)
Date required
What stage you are up to in the summary (eg. sent OR complete OR cancelled OR etc..)

CLIPPINGS

Abstract

–A TYPICAL DAY–

Receive a request

Verify the citation on the web
(Furl should even cache a copy of a citation from a subscription database)

Bookmark citation

• Enter whole citation in the title field
  (as mentioned before Connotea does this by auto-discovery)
• url
• Topic/tag – enter 6 tags

(Tags that will change are the summary tag and the supplier tag)

o Project name
o Business Unit
o Client name
o Summary (use New tag)
o Source
o Type
o Supplier (don’t apply this yet)

• Keyword – empty
• Comments – various dates, urgency
• Clippings – abstract of article

When you file a request with a DD supplier

• Topic/Tag

o summary – change from “new” to “sent”
o supplier – add supplier name

• Keyword – enter order no.
• Comments – add history details so far

Eg. Sent
CISTI
Date sent
Order no.

When I receive the document I pass it on to my client, then I make these changes:

• Topic/Tag

o Summary – change from “sent” to “complete”

• Comments – Complete, and date sent to your client

But if the supplier can’t fulfil my request, I make these changes:

• Topic/Tag

o Summary – change from “sent” to “rejected”

• Comments – rejected

Try another supplier, then make these changes:

• Topic/Tag

o Summary – change from “rejected” to “2nd send”
o Supplier – change to new supplier name

• Comments box would end up with this content

2nd Send
New supplier name
Date sent
Order no. (re-use the same number as original send)
History - first suppliers name and reason it was rejected

If the order gets cancelled (your client does want it anymore or your final supplier can’t get it), then make these changes:
(I suppose you could separate these 2 reasons and use a tag called unfulfilled)

• Topic/Tag

o Summary – change tag to “cancelled”
o Supplier – leave empty

• Comments box would end up with this content

Cancelled
Date sent
Order no. (re-use the same number as original send)
History - first suppliers name and reason it was cancelled
Add a note of the reason why it’s cancelled by the final supplier

–USABILITY–

Search by tag

Click “new” to see the new requests that need to be sent

Click “sent” and/or “2nd send” to see the current requests I’m waiting for

Click “reject”, to see new requests that have to be made from another supplier

Click “cancelled” to see all these requests

Click “complete” to see your fulfilled orders

Click a “clients name” to see all their order

Click a “business unit” to see all their orders

Click a “project name” to see all their orders

Click “EXT” or “INT” to see where you sourced your requests

Click “type” to see all your ILL or all your DD

Search full-text of your archive

Sort searches by entry date or topic or title

Enter a keyword:order no.

The order no. would come from a print out or email

It would be good if you could browse a list of all your order no. by consulting a keyword list or index…spreadsheets are good at this sort of thing

–IMPROVEMENT–

Down part is that Furl doesn’t combine tags
Eg. Show me all items in this project by this person that are complete in 2005 (use date sort)

It would be good if you could generate graphs from Furl for information like the above example (or even export to excel to generate a graph).

NOTE: you could use the unread/read instead of the Summary tag called “new”

NOTE: “Received” tag only applies to ILL, meaning you have received the book but you still haven’t returned it to the supplier in order to apply the “complete” tag

NOTE: I use Outlook calendar to remind me when a book has to be returned to the supplier, this date can also be noted in the comments field.

–CONCLUSION–

In the end I don’t think this is effective as using a spreadsheet…I like the idea of scrolling down a list, seeing what needs to be done at a glance.

Maybe it’s not right using Furl for projects like this as it wouldn’t be a very social use of tags (emerging vocabulary - folksonomy)…although you have the option to make Furl a private archive.

Benefits of using Furl

• it is a searchable database/archive
• viewable from any desktop
  (I suppose a spreadsheet and a word document could live on a share drive)
• all content stored in one spot
  (eliminates the need to use a spreadsheet linked to a word document)
• it has more intuitive searching
• export feature generates static lists to html, bibliographic citations, etc…
• email and RSS notification
  (handy if someone else wants to track your workflow)

Question

Does anyone know of any free Document Delivery tracking/workflow systems…or does anyone use an application like a spreadsheet or a database manager?