If you work in electronic access or resource sharing, you've likely been following the retirement of Get It Now. While many libraries completed their transition before the June 30 sunset, others are still evaluating alternatives, updating workflows, or refining their new document delivery processes. If your library is in that position, you're not alone.
Document delivery sits at the center of research support. When a researcher needs an article outside your licensed holdings, speed, reliability, and copyright compliance still matter just as much as they did before. The good news is that replacing Get It Now is often less about reinventing your workflows than making thoughtful updates to systems your team already knows well.
The Short Version Of A Long Story
Get It Now launched in the academic space before much of today's document delivery infrastructure existed. It gave libraries a brokered, copyright-compliant way to order individual journal articles at discounted rates, bringing more structure to what had been a fragmented and inconsistent process.
Since that time, electronic access to published material has changed considerably. Open access has grown. Publisher negotiations have become more sophisticated. The document delivery landscape has matured, with several providers now offering academic-rate access, broader coverage, and tighter integrations with library management systems. Get It Now's sunset reflects broader shifts that have been reshaping how libraries access content for some time.
Even if you had anticipated this change, that doesn't make the transition painless. If your library had journal titles set up in your link resolver and staff routines built around Get It Now’s ordering interface or related processes that were in place for years, there's still important work involved in updating workflows and ensuring requests continue flowing smoothly.
Start With Your Current Workflow
Most libraries had Get It Now embedded in one of three ways: unmediated patron-facing access, staff-mediated ordering, or integration with ILL management systems like ILLiad, Rapid, IDS, or Rapido. In practice, these workflows are tightly woven into daily operations. Even small changes can create confusion if requests don't flow the way staff and patrons expect.
One distinction worth clarifying upfront: unmediated patron-facing access, where patrons place article requests directly without staff review, typically requires a licensed platform rather than a standard per-article document delivery account. That's an important consideration when evaluating replacements, and it's worth mapping out exactly which workflow your library uses as you make changes.
Any new system should support your existing patterns without introducing unnecessary friction.
Not All Document Delivery Services Are Built The Same
In this context, “document delivery” refers to transactional access to individual articles outside your library’s existing holdings. There’s no ongoing commitment, just per-article fulfillment when needed.
At a surface level, most document delivery providers look similar. The differences tend to show up where it counts.
One of the biggest factors is the scope of their publisher agreements. A service is only as useful as what it can deliver: how many publishers are covered, how deep that coverage goes, and what happens when the article you need isn’t available digitally.
That last scenario comes up more often than you might expect. A meaningful portion of requests involves older content, obscure journals, or materials that exist only in print and can’t be pulled from a publisher server. Not every provider can fulfill those requests, so it's worth understanding how each service handles harder-to-source materials as part of your evaluation.
Where Research Solutions Fits In
Research Solutions has been part of the academic document delivery landscape for many years, working directly with content providers to provide access to individual articles outside of a library’s existing holdings.
Libraries can set up a document delivery account at no cost, with no annual license requirement or minimum order commitment. Requests are handled on a per-article basis, allowing libraries to use the service as needed.
When pricing is available, it is shown within the ordering workflow. For more obscure or hard-to-source materials, pricing may need to be confirmed before fulfillment. Libraries can also set account-level price caps to help manage costs.
If your library already uses ILLiad, Rapid, IDS, Rapido, or similar systems, the service can work alongside those existing workflows. It can also be used independently if preferred.
In addition to standard digital fulfillment, the service can support requests for print-only or hard-to-find materials, which may be relevant for libraries working with older or less accessible content.
Completing Your Transition
Librarians often have a few concerns when they switch document delivery providers.
One of the biggest considerations is updating how article request links are routed. If your journal titles pointed to Get It Now in Alma, OCLC, or another system, those links will need to be updated. It’s familiar work for most teams, but worth doing carefully.
The next thing to think about is system integration. For most libraries already using established ILL systems, the change is more about replacing the fulfillment source in your existing setup than building something new. This typically means the adjustment is more incremental than it might seem at first.
The third area is institutional memory. ILL and electronic resources staff know their current workflows, including the quirks, workarounds, and edge cases. Changing services means relearning some of this, and that’s just part of the process. The good news is that a well-designed document delivery service should be easy to learn, and having helpful support during the transition really helps.
What To Do If Your Library Is Still Making The Switch
Whether you're still evaluating replacement options or refining a workflow you've already put in place, it's worth reviewing how requests are routed, how your systems are integrated, and whether your current approach is meeting researchers' expectations.
If you'd like to compare approaches or talk through your library's workflow, we're always happy to share what we're seeing across academic libraries navigating the transition from Get It Now.
