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Overview of NCIP:

NISO Circulation Interchange Protocol

NCIP is a technical standard that enables a library’s circulation system to interact with one or more other circulation, resource-sharing, or self-service systems.

A typical, and manual, borrowing workflow may include 22 or more steps. With NCIP, the number of borrowing steps is reduced by 50 percent to just 11 steps. On the lending side, the traditional manual workflow of 14 steps is reduced to 8 steps when using NCIP, or 42% fewer steps. The detailed workflow comparison with and without NCIP is available on the NISO ISQ website. The specific steps each ILL staff member performs may vary depending on local policies and workflow. However, this workflow reflects a typical borrowing and lending transaction.

Mary E. Jackson – former A-G Product Manager and internationally recognized authority on interlibrary loan, document delivery, portal applications in libraries, and resource sharing issues – wrote a comprehensive article on the details of NCIP.

NCIP Savings Calculator

Developed by Auto-Graphics, Inc., the NCIP Savings Calculator permits librarians at the state or local level to estimate the number of staff hours, and thus staff costs, one or more libraries can save when implementing the NISO Circulation Interchange Protocol (NCIP) between the resource sharing system and one or more local circulation systems. Two calculators are provided: one for individual libraries and the second for statewide calculations.