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A Two-Phase Approach to Evaluate and Optimize an Interlibrary Loan Service: The Case Study of Provincia di Brescia

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Operations Research and Data Science in Public Services (AIROYoung 2022)

Part of the book series: AIRO Springer Series ((AIROSS,volume 11))

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Abstract

We analyze the case study of Provincia di Brescia, an Italian public body managing libraries in the province of Brescia, in Northern Italy. The public body offers an interlibrary loan service organized as follows. Libraries are divided into established groups, each associated with a fixed route. According to a predetermined calendar, each library is visited by a courier a few times a week. The transportation of the items in the network is performed by an external logistics firm, selected through a reverse auction. To assess the current implementation of the service in terms of routing and transportation costs, we propose a two-phase approach based on machine learning and mixed-integer linear programming, and we evaluate it on the data of 2019. Then, we discuss its applicability in reality, and provide a few insights.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://www.provincia.brescia.it.

  2. 2.

    https://opac.provincia.brescia.it.

  3. 3.

    We point out that users’ names were all anonymized to guarantee their privacy.

  4. 4.

    The virtual machine is hosted by the Centro Piattaforme Tecnologiche (CPT) of the University of Verona (https://cpt.univr.it/en).

  5. 5.

    http://project-osrm.org/.

  6. 6.

    https://www.provincia.brescia.it/sites/default/files/allegati/documenti/22843/dd_91_2016.pdf.

  7. 7.

    https://www.auto-data.net/en/fiat-talento-van-1.6-ecojet-125hp-l2h2-24706.

  8. 8.

    https://www.auto-data.net/en/citroen-jumpy-iii-m-1.6-bluehdi-95hp-43908.

  9. 9.

    https://dgsaie.mise.gov.it/prezzi-annuali-carburanti.

  10. 10.

    https://www.glassdoor.co.in/Salaries/italy-driver-salary-SRCH_IL.0,5_IN120_KO6,12.htm.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical, Energy and Management Engineering, University of Calabria, Rende, Italy

    Alice Raffaele

  2. Department of Mathematics, University of Padova, Via Trieste 63, 35131, Padova, Italy

    Matteo Zavatteri

  3. Sistema Bibliotecario Sud Ovest Bresciano, Via Ospedale Vecchio 8, 25032, Chiari, Italy

    Fabio Bazzoli

  4. Ufficio Biblioteche, Provincia di Brescia, Via Milano 13, 25100, Brescia, Italy

    Marco Gussago

  5. Department of Computer Science, University of Verona, Strada le Grazie 15, 37134, Verona, Italy

    Romeo Rizzi

Authors
  1. Alice Raffaele
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  2. Matteo Zavatteri
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  3. Fabio Bazzoli
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  4. Marco Gussago
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  5. Romeo Rizzi
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alice Raffaele .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics and Management, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg, Luxembourg

    Matteo Cosmi

  2. Department of Economics and Management, University of Brescia, Brescia, Italy

    Lorenzo Peirano

  3. Department of Computer Science, University of Verona, Verona, Italy

    Alice Raffaele

  4. Department of Engineering, Roma Tre University, Rome, Italy

    Marcella Samà

Appendices

A. The Interlibrary Loan Problem of Provincia di Brescia as a RVRP

Table 4 shows the main characteristics of the problem of optimizing the interlibrary loan service of Provincia di Brescia by following the taxonomy introduced by Lahyani et al. [13] to classify RVRP.

Table 4 Characteristics of the interlibrary loan problem of Provincia di Brescia, according to the taxonomy by Lahyani et al. [13]
Full size table

B. Statistical Analysis Performed on the Data of 2019

To evaluate the service not only in terms of routing costs, we performed a statistical analysis on the data of 2019. For each library in every cluster, we computed the average and median pickup/delivery copies and days of delay, the ratio between pickup/delivery copies and days of delay, and the ratio between the actual and the theoretical number of visits of a courier, as shown in Fig. 4.

Fig. 4
figure 4

Samples of the statistical analysis performed on a cluster of libraries currently adopted by Provincia of Brescia

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Raffaele, A., Zavatteri, M., Bazzoli, F., Gussago, M., Rizzi, R. (2023). A Two-Phase Approach to Evaluate and Optimize an Interlibrary Loan Service: The Case Study of Provincia di Brescia. In: Cosmi, M., Peirano, L., Raffaele, A., Samà, M. (eds) Operations Research and Data Science in Public Services. AIROYoung 2022. AIRO Springer Series, vol 11. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34546-3_2

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