Quick Summary
Minitex runs Minnesota's statewide interlibrary loan portal, MNLINK. The software that makes MNLINK possible, VDX, will be retired by OCLC in June 2024.
MNLINK is a statewide system that serves as a discovery and interlibrary loan interface for library patrons and staff. Through our participating libraries, patrons have easy access to the catalogs of most libraries in Minnesota. Patrons can request interlibrary loan items directly through MNLINK, and materials are delivered to their home library with Minitex delivery.
This access is currently provided through the WorldCat Discovery service, which has a subset of records uploaded to OCLC from Minnesota libraries of all types. OCLC’s WorldCat Discovery also acts as the central index for the service. The Interlibrary Loan portion of the service is provided by OCLC’s VDX Software. MNLINK has been running on VDX since 2004, although the last time that Minitex released an RFP for MNLINK, OCLC was awarded the contract for a scoped version of WorldShare ILL, which changed to Relais D2D when OCLC purchased Relais. Unfortunately, Relais has never developed enough to be a viable option for MNLINK.
As a result, a MNLINK Transition Task Force has been charged with recommending a new solution for MNLINK.
