Profiles of Best Practices in Academic Library Interlibrary Loan

Citation

Prowse, S. (2009), "Profiles of Best Practices in Academic Library Interlibrary Loan", Interlending & Document Supply, Vol. 37 No. 4, pp. 229-230. https://doi.org/10.1108/02641610911006337

This 107‐page report has been produced under the auspices of the Primary Research Group. I do not know anything about them but they have produced another report on ILL this year – “Higher Education Interlibrary Loan Management Benchmarks” – examining “the management and productivity practices of more than 85 academic libraries in the United States and Canada”. Among their many reports is one I would not mind looking at – “The Survey of Library Cafes” – should you start a café and if so how should you go about it? However, to the matter in hand …

Nine libraries were chosen “to represent a broad geographic diversity and for their reputations as leading academic research libraries.” Participants completed a questionnaire and some were interviewed. Two tables at the start list summary data about the libraries such as student numbers, book and journal holdings, ILL statistics and staffing. There is quite a range – from Oberlin College's 2,800 students to 66,099 at the University of Minnesota, while Tulane University and Colorado State University occupy the poles of items borrowed and loaned via ILL – 6,573 and 12,210 for Tulane and 66,485 and 70,733 for Colorado State, respectively. All the libraries employ student workers. All participate in more than one consortium, which is the “primary resource for obtaining ILL materials” and which the author identifies “as a key best practice for interlibrary loan departments in academic libraries”, while six are ARL members.

Key findings are presented at the beginning before each institution and library is examined in detail under eleven section headings. The scope of these sections is comprehensive and includes sub sections covering “best management advice for other academic ILL departments” or “of other academic departments” as it has it on page 32. These snippets were the parts I skipped to on a first look through. Again, there is quite a range – from a sentence to the nine points listed on page 17. One of the most popular pieces of advice is “consider acquiring copies via commercial document delivery suppliers, whose fees include copyright charges, rather than paying for ILL and then have to pay copyright charges on top”.

A disconcerting typographical oddity throughout is the use of question marks instead of bullet points. There's other evidence of a lack of quality control such as the inclusion of editor queries and the typo of Relays instead of Relais on page 85. The last page is headed – “Other reports of interest from Primary Research Group” – but is blank. Is that just false modesty given the two I have listed above? The report is available from the Primary Research Group website at www.primaryresearch.com/index.html for $72 in PDF or print.

1 Key findings

Supplying articles from ejournals emerged as a major issue and there are concerns over restrictions, despite reports of “aggressive attempts” to rectify this in negotiations. The problem for ILL supply is particularly acute in libraries that have moved away from print. We fare little better in the UK – NESLI2 licences permit ILL from ejournals but not via download and send – you have to print, scan and send.

The author finds it surprising that open access (OA) and institutional repositories (IR) have not had a great effect on ILL. Yet he also reports that most of the ILL departments do not have a system for tracking these materials and do not routinely conduct searches as part of their workflows. On the other hand some of the libraries subscribe to the Rapid service and this does automated searching and harvesting of OA and IR articles. Some libraries reported finding OA articles when conducting further searches to solve problem requests or a supplier sometimes replies that OA is available. An editor query on this has been left in on page 22 (further editor queries can be found on pages 23, 24, 28, 32, 35, 37, and 47). No doubt the impact of OA and IR will feature in due course but there is, as yet, nowhere near a critical mass.

Libraries generally do not charge for ILLs or impose limits and tend to offer the same service to different categories of user, e.g. students, faculty, distance users. Turnaround times and fill rates were top priorities for participants and they run regular reports to analyse data and measure performance, and also to supply statistics to various bodies. Of personal interest is the University of Minnesota's focus on the detail of an ILLiad report that breaks down the time of each processing stage of an ILL request, since, as I have argued before, most of the turnaround time is taken up by suppliers.

There is a growing development of providing extra services, e.g. scanning and electronically delivering articles to their own users or purchasing titles for adding to collections. Electronic delivery of articles to users is often via a web server.

When it takes place, ILL from special collections proceeds on a case‐by‐case basis. There is currently an OCLC/SHARES initiative to change minds away from blanket refusals and encourage lending and sharing. It is encouraging that these libraries have taken that first step.

All participants use ILLiad and tend to rave about it.

2 Case studies

Delving into the individual case studies is rewarded by discovering little gems of information. The first one, the University of Texas at Arlington, is something of a treasure trove in itself – for starters they claim an annual economic impact of $1 billion on the region, but who knows how they worked that out? Recommendations include giving the manager a credit card to purchase items as needed. They use a comparison shop to get the best shipping rates for special items. Back in the old days (I am guessing 1980s) they used to employ a student to phone users telling them items had arrived for collection. They have provided unmediated document delivery with a cost limit per article ordered, but this was underused (perhaps the cost limit was too low?) and may be discontinued. I am sure ILL staff will also recognise the tale of a user who desperately needed an article for a presentation. Did she contact the ILL department? Of course not – she went straight to the assistant director (as you do). However, a happy outcome ensured that the ILL department made a good impression higher up.

Generally, ILL departments are rated highly in surveys and feedback.

A consultant recently gave me this sage philosophical insight – “your strengths are your weaknesses”. I think that applies here. The case studies feature the voices of the ILL staff and capture some of the detail of how their departments are run, giving the report some colour. However, this approach also brings repetition. Reading how ILLiad helps libraries observe the CONTU “rule of five” guideline would have been fine just the once, thanks.

I enjoyed reading the report and there is enough to interest a non‐US audience. However, anyone familiar with best practice guidelines from ARL will also be familiar with what a top borrowing and lending library has to do to achieve that status. One of the curses of being the subject of a review on interlending is that a work will be recommended for reading via ILL rather than by purchase. I would go along with that, particularly as the $72 price tag seems very steep, even at a good exchange rate.