OneButton: A Link Resolving Application to Guide Users to Optimal Fulfillment Options

Abstract

Like many consortia, institutional members of the Private Academic Library Network of Indiana (PALNI) provide multiple fulfillment options to obtain requested items for their users. Users can place on shelf holds on items, or they can request material that isn’t held by their institution through a group circulation resource sharing network (dubbed PALShare) or through traditional InterLibrary Loan (ILL) (through WorldShare ILL or ILLiad). All of these options can be confusing to users who may not understand the best or fastest way to get access to needed materials. A PHP application, OneButton, was developed that replaces multiple fulfillment buttons in institutional discovery interfaces with a single OpenURL link. OneButton looks up holdings and availability at a user’s home institution and across the consortium and routes the user to the optimal fulfillment option for them. If an item is held by and available at their institution, the user can be shown a stack map to help guide them to the item on the shelf; if an item is held by and available at the consortium, the user is routed to a group circulation request form; otherwise, the user is routed to an ILL request form. All routing and processing are handled by the OneButton application – the user doesn’t need to think about what the ‘best’ fulfillment option is. This article will discuss the experiences of one institution using OneButton in production since fall 2017, analytics data gathered, and how other institutions can adopt the application (freely available on GitHub: https://github.com/PALNI/onebutton).