the University of Texas at Arlington, Tulane University, the University o= f Minnesota, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, Brigham Young University, the University of Tennessee, Colorado State University,=

Oberlin College and Stony Brook University. The report was edited and supervised by Paul Kelsey, MLS, University of Texas, Austin.

The libraries interviewed shared their thoughts on a broad range of topic= s including but not restricted to: workflow management, productivity measures, departmental organization, budgets and spending trends, service=

to distance learning students, copyright and licensing issues, measures =

for special collections, automation and software use, use of institutiona= l repositories and open access publications, shipping costs and procedures,=

and many other facets of academic interlibrary loan management.

The purpose of the report is to define and diffuse best practices by profiling measures taken by nine leading institutions of higher education. Although the report contains much useful quantitative information, especially relating to budgets and employment, the focus in =

this report is on a journalistic narrative explaining departmental goals,=

procedures and practices and evaluating results.

Just a few of the report’s main findings are that:

• Surprisingly, institutional repositories (IR) and open access (OA) =

materials have not substantially impacted interlibrary loan services, at =

least not for the libraries surveyed. Most of the participants report the=

same or an increased volume of business, and most of the departments do =

not have a system for tracking these materials.

• Perhaps as a result of the advantages of participation in
consortiums all of the departments reported relatively low use of commercial document delivery services. Some of the commercial suppliers =

used were: Ingenta, the British Library, Harvard Business Publishing, CISTI, ASME, Sage, Informa, NTIS, Storming Media, InfoTrieve, and the National Library of Medicine.

• All of the libraries report offering the same services (with some =

exceptions) to their constituents regardless of their status as students =

or faculty members. In general, the departments do not charge at all for =

services (some reported occasionally charging under special circumstances), and most do not impose limits on the amount of material =

patrons can order.

• All of the departments offer the same ILL services to distance
education students as to other constituents, with some minor differences.=

The distance education students sign up for ILLiad accounts and receive =

the majority of their articles electronically.

• The majority of the libraries typically do not loan special
collections items or lend out such items only under special circumstances= .

• Most of the reporting libraries use turnaround time and fill rate =

as the chief measures for evaluating service and productivity. Depending =

on the library, departments run ILLiad reports weekly, monthly, annually =

or on an as-needed basis, and several libraries report using customized =

Microsoft Access reports to analyze data.

The full 110-page report is available from Primary Research Group or from=

leading book distributors. For further information view our website at =

 www.PrimaryResearch.com or call us at 212-736-2316

Close to 15% of the libraries in the sample have performed a user survey of ILL services within the past four years.
Mean turnaround time for borrowing requests for books was longer, a mean of 7.67 days, 8.7 for public colleges and 6.31 for private colleges. Requests from Canada took longer to fulfill than requests from the United States, by a considerable margin of more than 1.5 days.
Mean spending for the libraries in the sample on shipping & courier fees related to interlibrary loan was $6,857, with a median of just $2,042.
Close to 66% of the libraries in the sample allow interlibrary loan of college textbooks.
More than 86% of private colleges in the sample participate in a state borrowing network, while 71.7% of public college libraries participate in one.
73% of the libraries in the sample use fax delivery for interlibrary loan fulfillment.
A shade more than 47% of the libraries in the sample use their interlibrary loan facilities to facilitate loans of materials between campuses or units of their own institution.
For more than 57% of the libraries in the sample, use of photocopies in interlibrary loan had decreased and had increased for only 9.1%.
29.17% of the libraries in the sample strongly agree with the statement that interlibrary loan staff should have the individual in charge of database licenses also verify license issues.
Close to 13% of the libraries surveyed strongly agreed that license issue questions relating to interlibrary loan at their institution are handled on an ad hoc, as-needed basis, without a written set or practices.
For about 21.2% of the libraries surveyed, the ILL department is under the auspices of the library’s reference department.
17.65% of the colleges in the sample, the DD/EDD function is under the auspices of the access services. All were U.S.-based colleges and, in general, the more complex the degree offered, the more likely that the college was to have the DD/EED function under the auspices of the access services department.
21.69% of the libraries in the sample used WorldCat Local.
20% of the libraries in the sample have ever tried to negotiate broader license terms for institutional and patron use of their digital collections, specifically for interlibrary loan
40% of the libraries in the sample report their in-state loans in their ILL statistics. More than 59% of community colleges did so.
Close to 40% of the libraries in the sample require an MLS or MLIS librarian to supervise the interlibrary loan or document delivery department.
72.6% of the libraries in the sample do not charge for document delivery or for interlibrary loan and 19.2% charge to defray some, but less than half, of the total cost.
Data is broken out by size and type of college, for public and private colleges, and for colleges in the USA and in Canada. The report is available for $89.50 directly from Primary Research Group, or from major book distributors. PDF and site license versions are also available. For a table of contents and further information, view our website at www.PrimaryResearch.com.