Interlibrary loan librarians interested in improving the performance of their units may wish to order a new publication by the Association of Research Libraries entitled Measuring the Performance of Interlibrary Loan Operations in North American Research and College Libraries. The study, which was funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and undertaken in collaboration with the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIP), analyzed data from 97 research and 22 college libraries. Four performance measures were used to analyze the data:
the direct costs a library incurs when filling an ILL request (borrowing or lending) , the percentage of requests successfully filled (borrowed or lent), the number of calendar days it takes a library to complete a borrowing request, and the level of user satisfaction with the borrowing services.
Summary findings indicate that the overall performance of ILL operations in college libraries was better than those in research libraries. College libraries spend an average combined cost (borrowing and lending) of $19.33 per filled ILL request, while research libraries spend an average of $27.83. Staff costs represent between two-thirds and three-fourths of costs, but Mary Jackson, the principal investigator for the study, was not able to determine why college libraries are able to do the work for less. The study did determine that high-performance ILL operations encourage or require patrons to submit requests electronically, their ILL departments are managed by support staff supervisors, and they make extensive use of technology and software. In addition, the libraries that offer user-initiated borrowing have lower costs and faster turn-around times than libraries that have staff-mediated ILL requests.
The study lays out strategies for libraries to improve local performance that center around staff, technology, and administration of ILL operations.
The 122-page report is priced at $45, plus $6 shipping and handling.
[Contact: Association of Research Libraries, Publications Department, 21 Dupont Circle, Washington, DC 20036; telephone 202-296- 2296; FAX 202-872-0884]
