A screenshot of the new interlibrary loan homepage, which shows examples, or “factoids,” as Ben Bockmann calls them, of digital and physical resources that the ϳԹվ library has borrowed from other libraries around the world.
Especially from his direct supervisor. “It adds an engaging and informative backdrop to a purely functional page,” Interlibrary Loan Supervisor Guy Saldanha said.
The global map serves as the introduction to ϳԹվ’s Interlibrary Loan service (ϳԹվ ILL), which is connected to more than 450 libraries in forty-five countries.
”This backdrop to the login is a novel concept among ILL services nationwide,” Saldanha continued. “We wanted to get away from the typical boilerplate login and give people a sense of the extent of where we go around the world to find material, and the range of material we have access to.”
The library's hunt for materials in 2024 supported thirty students' honors projects and seventy-two faculty publications. Sixty-seven percent of ϳԹվ faculty and nearly a quarter of students use ILL.
The site went live on the first day of the spring semester. Now when users visit ϳԹվ's ILL to request a book, article, or other resources, they see a Pacific-centered projection of the world.
Before they log in, they can pause to read more than a dozen boxes that unobtrusively pop up with examples of research materials delivered to ϳԹվ users in 2024. For example: A book chapter on the Japanese legal system from Myongji University in Seoul. A rare nineteenth-century musical score from the Russian State Library in Moscow. A 1930s survey of the Asian sheep industry from Australia's Black Mountain Library.
Saldanha said the map demonstrates Bockmann's sensitivity to the user experience and his knack for design. “It was a challenge for Ben to do this without overdoing it, to not distract people from the purpose of the page [to log in], and to give them a sense of what our service can do for them.”
It also converts what is the quotidian, universal act of logging in to a website into an experience that “communicates ϳԹվ’s increasing connectivity to the wider world, especially to developing regions that are outside established resource sharing networks,” he added.
When he was a sophomore, Bockmann was encouraged by his friend Addison Davis ’25, who works for the ϳԹվ library, to leave his dining hall job for ϳԹվ ILL.
Saldanha quickly realized Bockmann's potential. He steered him away from his original task—locating books in the stacks—and toward web development. “We had a growing need to upgrade our web pages and to introduce automated features to improve our request turnaround time and staff productivity,” Saldanha said.
Bockmann’s first tasks were to update the code for ILL’s existing web pages, ensure accessibility compliance, and improve support for mobile devices. Requesting via links in the Library’s catalog and databases required skillful customization and “an intricate knowledge of how our database functions and how it interfaces with the work we do daily,” Saldanha said.
Later, Bockmann introduced numerous features to enhance the user experience, including a novel solution for book requests and another innovation to handle article requests that send users a link to the full text in the .
Saldanha said the new tools have substantially reduced staff processing time by automating more requests, ensuring that research materials arrive sooner for ϳԹվ users. Sixty percent of all requests are now sent without staff mediation—an eight percent improvement in sixteen months.
While this happens seamlessly, it was much harder to accomplish than it appears. When Bockmann started on the project, he said “I knew nothing about the computer languages involved. What now would take me a week took me that whole semester.”
The success Bockmann has had at the Library and the improvements he’s made for both users and staff show how important campus jobs can be for students, Saldanha said. “Our department is committed to providing opportunities for students to develop critical skills in areas in which they want to excel that also contribute to the Library’s long-term strategic goals.”
Bockmann agreed. “Professionally, I have gotten a tremendous amount of experience doing front-end web development,” he said. “It's all been self-taught from YouTube and blogs.” Plus, “I've learned a lot about workflow, working in a team, and meeting deadlines.”
After he graduates, he said he'll look for work in data science or AI. Graduate school might also be down the road. And he's open to working for a library again. “With a computer science degree, you're not funneled into any one field,” he said. “Working in a library is a great place to be. You have all this information, you're working with people in different fields. It's very dynamic.”
