Mike Richins, Director of Product Management — RapidILL, Ex Libris
In these special times it is heartwarming to see how much impact communities have, and how we can all make a difference — even with a single gesture.
That is why the first thing that I want to do is thank every single member of staff in the RapidILL community of libraries that stepped up and made their resources available for libraries in need!
On March 25th, as part of the Ex Libris COVID-19 Remote Learning & Research Assistance initiatives, we launched what we called the COVID-19 RapidILL pod, enabling non RapidILL libraries to borrow electronic articles and chapters from existing RapidILL members without any cost or obligation.
We created a short movie to show you the amazing outcome of this initiative and the overwhelming feedback we received from the borrowers.
We keep getting great feedback from borrowers. We’ll create a follow-up blog post with new feedback in the coming weeks!
This initiative was created to support libraries so that they can continue to fulfill students’ requests even when the physical doors of the library were closed.
The RapidILL community of libraries stepped up in great numbers and agreed to make their available library resources more widely and quickly available, to be shared with their colleagues all around the world.
The full list of lenders that opted in to help can be found in the Current Members section of the Rapid Home Page: https://rapid.exlibrisgroup.com/ by expanding the view of the COVID-19 pod.
I’m proud that I’m part of this wonderful community.
Yours,
Mike Richins and the entire Ex Libris family
May 21, 2020
