Holiday Closure

WTS will be CLOSED December 24-27th & December 30-January 3rd in observance of the holidays.

WTS is open today (Thursday, 12/10)

WTS was closed yesterday due to severe winter weather. We are OPEN today and working on all requests that were sent to us yesterday.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Everyone at WTS wishes our clients a happy and safe Thanksgiving holiday!

And a reminder -- WTS will be closed Thursday and Friday (November 26 & 27) for the holiday.

Happy Halloween!

From left to right: Karen Wager as the Evil Twin; Christy Henrikson as Karen Wagner; Rebekah Turner as a carrot; Rachel Watters as "bear"foot and pregnant; Kate Davis as a flapper.

Closed on Monday, Oct. 12

WTS will be closed on Monday, October 12. See our hours for a full listing of days we'll be closed over the next couple of years.

Got a lot of requests? We can handle it!

WTS staff LOVE to be busy and LOVE tackling challenges. So if you have a big batch of requests that would be really easy to send to one supplier, but you feel guilty about drowning one service in the deluge...forgetaboutit! Our staff will gleefully alert the team and we'll all pitch in to get them done on time.

NEW! Pay Invoices Online, AmEx Accepted

After a prolonged wait, we are now ready to accept credit card payments online. Just go to our website and click on the Pay Invoices Online link in the left sidebar. We can now also accept American Express, and Discover (Visa and MasterCard, too, of course).

This change means that we will no longer retain credit card numbers and automatically pay invoices for you. Beginning with the August invoice (which we will send out September 1st), all clients who wish to pay by credit card will have to use the online system.

Copyright costs for book chapters increasingly expensive

We have seen a dramatic increase in the copyright charges for chapters from books that have the words "drugs" or "pharmaceutical" in their titles. The copyright is often $50 per page.

Staff will be vigilant about notifying clients of these extremely expensive copyright fees. We'll also let you know what your options are for obtaining these materials.

Changes to Book Loan shipping charges on Sept. 1

Starting September 1, 2009, book loan fees will cover only the cost of the loan and not ground shipping. For many years, WTS has included ground shipping in its book loan fees although clients have often chosen to pay for priority shipping. Due to increased ground shipping costs, we will no longer provide that service. You may provide your Fed-Ex or UPS accounts or we will add shipping charges to the cost of your loan.

If you choose to have us add the charges, UPS Ground shipping fees are generally $5-$15, depending on the distance the book needs to travel and the weight of the volume. Priority Shipping costs tend to be $15-$30.

Library materials must be returned via a trackable service.

WI state mandated furloughs affect WTS hours

WTS will be closed on the following days July 2009 - June 2011:
New Years Day, Martin Luther King Jr Day, Presidents Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, Thanksgiving Day and the Friday after Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve Day, Christmas Day, New Years Eve Day

Additionally, we will be closed due to State Furloughs on:
December 30, 2009
April 2, 2010
May 21, 2010
December 30, 2010
March 18, 2011
May 20, 2011

Web site can answer invoice questions

Since we just sent out July bills, it's a good time to let everyone know that if you have questions about items on your invoice, the WTS web site can be really helpful.

If you need to know which article was ordered under a WTS number, or if there's no reference number on the invoice and you need to figure out who at your company is responsible for the article, just go to the "Order Status" area of our web site. All of your requests are listed by the date they were submitted. You can also search for requests by WTS number, confirmation number, or reference number. When your request appears, just click on the entry and you'll be able to see the citation and who the article was delivered to.

As always, if you have a question about an invoice you can call us at 608-262-5917, email wts@engr.wisc.edu, or chat with us online.

WTS on Facebook

If you're a Facebook member and like our service, please become a fan of Wisconsin TechSearch!

Staff Changes

WTS bid a fond farewell to Jennifer Velasco in late July 2008. Jennifer and her family moved to Palo Alto, California, for her husband's post-doc position at Stanford University. WTS staff miss Jennifer's wry humor and delectable treats, but we suspect that she prefers California's weather.
Annie Rauh left the WTS staff in November 2008 to work full-time as the Interim Information Services Librarian for Wendt Library.

We welcomed Christy Henrikson back to WTS in August 2008. Christy worked for WTS when she was a grad student at UW-Madison's library school, and before that, we knew her as a WTS client. After getting her masters degree, Christy lived in Minneapolis for two years before we were able to lure her back to Wisconsin. There's a rumor that Christy has said she found her "dream job" at WTS and we're certainly happy to have her back.

Tim Eleyet started at WTS in April as our web developer. Most recently, Tim was Systems Developer in the Wisconsin Traffic Operations and Safety (TOPS) Lab, designing and implementing a real-time application allowing for the interfacing of data systems at the Wisconsin State Patrol and the Wisconsin State Traffic Operations Center. For several years before that, he owned his own business providing a wide variety of software solutions for companies. Prior to that he worked in industry, doing application development, database management and other IT support. We have big dreams for our web site and are very excited that we have Tim to help us realize those dreams!

New service launched today!

About an hour ago, WTS launched a new online chat service so that clients can instantly talk with a WTS staff member right on our web site.

You'll notice the chat box in the lower left sidebar on every page of our web site (it's also on the right sidebar of this blog). So, whenever you have a question or want to alert us to something - even while you're filling out the request form - just send us a chat and you'll get instant gratification.*

Take note of the "edit nickname" line near the bottom of the chat box - you can enter your name there so the WTS staffer can see whom they're chatting with.

We're really excited to be able to offer this cool new tool to our clients. Give it a try!

*The chat service will be monitored during regular WTS business hours, and may be unavailable when staff is away for a minute. Just check to see if the chat box says if wts.staff is online or offline. If you send us a message while we're offline, we'll get the message the next time we log in- just to be sure to leave your contact information.

Welcome to the WTS blog!

We are so pleased to bring you a new way of keeping up on all things WTS - our very own blog!

You may or may not have known that WTS had a newsletter, The TechSearcher. We found that it was being published increasingly infrequently and the rush to write, edit, and publish several articles at once caused some consternation for its editor. We hope that this blog will be a better way to keep our readers informed of enhancements to our services, policy reminders or changes, and general interesting tidbits.

Bookmark this page or subscribe to the RSS feed today and keep up with your favorite document delivery service!