Emeryville, CA—A 2004 Association of Research Libraries (ARL) study on mediated and user-initiated interlibrary loan and document delivery has found that libraries using INN-Reach provide the most cost effective and responsive services to their users. Seventy-two libraries, including eleven using INN-Reach, were surveyed in Assessing ILL/DD Services: New Cost-Effective Alternatives (Washington, ARL, 2004). The study compared user-initiated options (INN-Reach, ILLINET, RAPID, URSA), local document delivery, commercial document delivery, and mediated interlibrary loan.
Libraries using the INN-Reach software led in a number of significant categories:
- Mean staff costs for lending ($2.14) and borrowing ($2.56) were lowest across all categories;
- Turnaround time for lending (2.4 hours) was faster than any user-initiated method;
- Turnaround time for borrowing (2.5 days) was faster than any user-initiated method;
- Fill rate for lending and borrowing (both 87%) was higher than any user-initiated method; and
- Mean borrowing unit cost ($2.89) was over eleven times less expensive than commercial document delivery.
"On average, the eleven libraries using INN-Reach ranked among the best of the libraries reporting data for the six user-initiated services," says Mary E. Jackson, author of the study. "In most cases, user-initiated services like INN-Reach have lower unit costs, higher fill rates, and faster turnaround times than mediated services. For this reason, the study has recommended that libraries move as much mediated ILL traffic as possible to a user-initiated service, as soon as possible."
Innovative Chairman and CEO Jerry Kline says, "This study confirms that INN-Reach boosts access while reducing costs, something that consortia like MOBIUS, Summit, and OhioLINK have been reporting to Innovative for years."
To order a copy of the study, go to the ARL website (www.arl.org/arl/pr/ill_dd_study.html).
About Innovative
With over 25 years of partnership with the library community, Innovative Interfaces (www.iii.com) is the leader in providing Web-powered, Java™-based automated library systems. Its flagship product offering, Millennium, is installed in thousands of libraries in 42 countries around the world. The company is headquartered in Emeryville, California, with offices in Australia, Canada, France, Hong Kong, Korea, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, and the United Kingdom.
