“A message from our CEO for all VDX Operators

It is with great sadness that I have to inform public libraries in southern Ontario that the SOLS interlibrary loan delivery service will permanently cease to operate, effective April 26th, 2019. I know this is very sad and disappointing news but given the enormity of the cut to our operating budget, there is no alternative. Even under our previous budget allocation, it was becoming difficult to sustain the service because of ever increasing operating costs.

Please read the following information carefully:

Interlibrary Loan Service

VDX accounts will all be under suspension until at least May 31.  This will prevent ZPortal patron access as well.

  • What does this mean for ILL operators?
  • You can monitor your existing ILL requests, and apply actions (e.g. returned, received, checked in) as necessary.
  • Existing requests in a pending state will automatically expire and end up as “Not supplied/check manual” or “end of rota”, in your work queue.
    Either way, the pending requests will not be filled.
  • You will not receive any new lending requests, or be able to issue any new borrowing requests.
  • If you have books from other libraries that need to be returned after April 26th, you must mail them.
    Use the Library Shipping tool at https://libraryshippingtool.ca/en/home/ to access the library book rate.
  • Libraries should be prepared to absorb the cost of postage.
  • We can’t stop out of province (out of INFO) requests from being processed by VDX. You have the option to fill these requests or not.
  • What does this mean for Zportal?
  • Patrons will see a message when attempting to log into ZPortal that indicates that the Interlibrary Loan system is suspended due to budget cuts.

Postage reimbursement:

OLS-North has informed us that it will no longer be providing postage reimbursement to its libraries.

It is highly unlikely SOLS will be able to provide postage reimbursement for ILL materials going forward, after April 26th.

Special pick-up and drop-offs

During the first 2 weeks of May, we will be assessing residual volume and determining how we will handle this material.
We will email all libraries the week of May 6th to outline next steps.  However, we do urge libraries to return as much of their material as possible by April 26th.

Summer Reading

All Summer Reading materials WILL be delivered to participating libraries, as in previous years.

Interbranch service delivery

We will be contacting libraries that use our Interbranch Service directly next week.

Jobber deliveries

We will be contacting Jobbers next week as well.

Pool rotations

We will no longer provide delivery service for pool rotations, effective immediately.

The end of the SOLS delivery service means that 24 drivers (full time, part time and occasional) will lose their jobs. Last year, they drove almost 1 million kilometers to deliver over 710,000 packages to 153 main library branches across southern Ontario. They also made reciprocal agreements between libraries like the PCIN and LiNC network possible. They brought new purchased material from jobbers to over 100 libraries at cost effective rates. Truly the end of an era in provincial resource sharing.

Linda Langedijk

Interlibary Loan/Helpdesk

416-961-1669 ext.5113

800-387-5765

llangedijk@sols.org

www.sols.org

1 Yonge Street, Suite 1504

Toronto, Ontario M5E 1E5″