beaubien.indd
63
Challenges Facing High-volume
Interlibrary Loan Operations:
Baseline Data and Trends in the CIC
Consortium
Anne K. Beaubien, Jennifer Kuehn, Barbara Smolow,
and Suzanne M. Ward
Anne K. Beaubien is Director, Cooperative Access Services and Grants, in the University Library at the
University of Michigan; e-mail: beaubien@umich.edu. Jennifer Kuehn is Head, Interlibrary Loan, at Ohio
State University Libraries; e-mail: kuehn.1@osu.edu. Barbara Smolow is Head, Interlibrary Loan Depart-
ment, at Northwestern University Library; e-mail: b-smolow@northwestern.edu. Suzanne M. Ward is
Head, Access Services, at Purdue University Libraries; e-mail: ward@purdue.edu. The initial report and
this article would not have been possible without the generous cooperation of our CIC ILL colleagues. They
worked hard to fit their local internal data into a form that could be used to compare the same elements
across all libraries and offered insightful comments at various stages of the report’s development. Susan
Singleton, director of the CIC’s Center for Library Initiatives, compiled some of the data and provided
unfailing support and encouragement. Michael Wi�, technical information systems analyst at Purdue
University Libraries, wrote the ILLiad borrowing turnaround query and assisted colleagues in running
it. Suzanne Garre� of the University of Michigan’s University Library provided invaluable assistance in
providing uniform forma�ing for the tables in preparation for publication.
Interlibrary loan managers of a consortial group of large academic librar-
ies presented a comprehensive report of their collective activities to their
library directors to provide a better picture of their libraries’ resource- sharing
activities, issues, and trends. The report covered three years of data and
addressed trends in overall volume, turnaround time, serials-holding data in
OCLC, lending audiovisual materials, reasons for unfilled lending requests,
and resource-sharing aspects of electronic licensing. The study documents
the importance of technical service’s role in maintaining accurate OCLC
holdings and in facilitating union listing, two activities that have a tremen-
dous impact on ILL effectiveness and efficiency. It also demonstrates that
presenting common issues collectively to top administrators resulted in
changes that might not have been achieved so easily at single institutions.
This paper summarizes the report on consortial resource sharing, lists the
report’s four recommendations, and reviews the positive changes in the
participating libraries’ resource-sharing practices six months later.
he library directors of the
Committee on Institutional
Cooperation (CIC) meet pe-
riodically at the CIC head-
quarters in Chicago.1 In June 2004, their
agenda included a segment on resource
sharing and the authors were invited to
form a subgroup of the CIC ILL directors
to prepare a report for the meeting. The
report’s goal was to outline the major
challenges of managing high-volume ILL
operations in the current environment
of high patron expectations, rising costs,
copyright and electronic licensing issues,
changing automation choices, emerging
formats for scholarly materials, and other
factors. The ILL directors viewed this op-
portunity as a chance not only to inform
the library directors, but also to compare
our institutions’ resource-sharing statis-
tics and practices in a new way.
The CIC library directors are interested
in discussing the issues surrounding
resource sharing for many reasons. One
reason is that the debate concerning own-
ership versus access has interested the
library profession for several decades. It
now seems clear that ownership of library
materials on the scale enjoyed twenty or
thirty years ago is unlikely even at large
research institutions, even though access
to these materials is more critical than
ever and is likely to remain so in the fu-
ture. The key to meeting patrons’ needs
for locally unavailable material is the abil-
ity to rely on fast, efficient, and generous
borrowing partners. Any institution that
expects such service should be prepared
to provide the same to its partners. Mem-
bership in a consortium with reciprocal
lending agreements is one important tool
that a library can use to draw cost-effec-
tively on the resources of similar institu-
tions while sharing its own.
To introduce the report, the CIC ILL
directors proposed a “snapshot view”
of the CIC institutions’ resource-sharing
activities. This view would meet the fol-
lowing three objectives:
• To provide three years of baseline
data
• To show comparable statistics
across institutions
• To reveal trends over time and
among institutions
The authors quickly discovered that,
apart from a few basic numbers (such as
annual totals reported to the ARL), all our
offices collect and report internal statistics
very differently. The first challenge was
to define the essential data elements; the
second was to ask our counterparts across
the consortium to compile the data in a
uniform manner.2
Data were compiled from July 1, 2001
through March 30, 2004. This period is
three months short of three full fiscal
years; the library directors’ meeting in
early June 2004 necessitated using esti-
mated figures for the last three months of
FY04. The tables show either extrapolated
figures for the last three months of this
fiscal year or indicate that data were col-
lected only through March 30, 2004.
Total ILL Activity for CIC Libraries,
FY02–FY04
Table 1, the “snapshot view,” summarizes
the total ILL activity for the CIC libraries,
reflecting a total of almost one million
borrowing and lending requests filled
among CIC institutions during the three-
year period.
All CIC libraries use OCLC for process-
ing ILL requests among CIC libraries.
Some also use RLIN and/or Docline for
non-CIC transactions; these figures were
included in the table to show the total
volume of ILL traffic at each institution.
For borrowing, the percentages of
requests filled by CIC partners range
from 8 (University of Illinois, Urbana-
Champaign, FY04) to 74 percent (North-
western University, FY02). For lending,
the percentages for filled requests range
from 12 (University of Illinois, Urbana-
Champaign, FY02 and FY04) to 50 percent
(University of Michigan, FY02). Some CIC
libraries select CIC partners as their first
choices for filling lending requests; oth-
ers tend to turn first to local or in-state
borrowing partners and then to CIC
partners. Libraries with the lower percent-
ages of CIC-to-CIC transactions on this
table have particularly strong reciprocal
ILL relationships with in-state libraries,
principally those with strong academic
collections.
For example, in FY04, 45 percent of the
University of Iowa’s borrowing transac-
tions were with CIC partners. However,
only 29 percent of its lending traffic was
64 College & Research Libraries January 2006
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Challenges Facing High-volume Interlibrary Loan Operations 65
TA
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66 College & Research Libraries January 2006
TA
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02
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44
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50
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31
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4
40
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FY
04
(e
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d)
43
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31
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11
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29
27
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,8
25
9,
87
6
32
%
7,
58
1
36
%
Challenges Facing High-volume Interlibrary Loan Operations 67
with CIC libraries, suggest-
ing that the University of
Iowa was a major resource-
sharing source for other li-
braries in Iowa. For the entire
FY02–FY04 time frame, the
University of Illinois, Ur-
bana-Champaign, borrowed
between 8 and 10 percent
of its filled ILL transactions
from CIC partners and lent
between 12 and 17 percent to
CIC partners. The University
of Illinois, Urbana-Cham-
paign, has the largest library
collection of any publicly
supported university in the
United States; this low per-
centage suggests that the CIC
libraries have been successful
in their conscious efforts to
borrow from the University
of Illinois, Urbana-Cham-
paign, as a last resort to avoid
overloading this partner. In
general, table 1 shows that
in terms of percentages of the
total volume, CIC libraries
lend more heavily to other
libraries (probably those in
their own states) than they
do to each other.
Borrowing Requests
The total number of borrow-
ing requests increased during
these three years in all but
five libraries, with the most
dramatic increase being at
the University of Minnesota
(27%). The percent of requests
unfilled (including requests
for locally available items)
ranged from 5 to 42 percent.
Table 1 counts both the total
number of requests received
from patrons and the total
filled through ILL activity.
The CIC ILL directors feel
that the total number of re-
quests received is an accurate
TA
B
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(G
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,0
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%
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%
FY
03
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69
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22
%
19
,5
38
53
%
53
,6
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52
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%
14
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%
FY
04
(e
xt
ra
po
la
te
d)
39
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34
31
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51
7,
78
3
19
%
15
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%
59
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03
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%
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%
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68 College & Research Libraries January 2006
reflection of the activity, effort, and costs
associated with processing patrons’
requests.
This study defined “unfilled” requests
as those items that were available locally
or that could not be obtained through ILL.
ARL statistics only ask for the total num-
ber of patron requests processed through
ILL channels, and of those, the ones that
are successfully filled versus those that
were unfilled. ILL practitioners have long
chafed at these definitions. In many ILL
operations, patrons ask for a significant
number of items that are available locally.
In many institutions, defining “unfilled”
as only those requests that fail in the ILL
process overlooks a third or more of the
total effort required to handle patron re-
quests. (The discussion of table 7 later in
this article more fully explores the concept
of unfilled requests.)
Lending Requests
The total number of lending requests
also increased in all but five libraries (a
different set of five than those discussed
in the section on borrowing requests). The
largest increases were at the University of
Illinois, Chicago (45%), and Northwestern
University (27%). The percentage of lend-
ing requests that were unfilled ranged be-
tween 29 and 61 percent. Unfilled rates for
lending requests are naturally higher than
for unfilled borrowing requests for both
reasons that the lender cannot control (for
example, item checked out or not found
on shelf) and reasons the lender can con-
trol (for example, providing accurate local
serials-holdings information on OCLC).
(Unfilled lending requests are discussed
in depth in the section on table 6.)
Returnables versus Nonreturnables
ILL statistics gathering o�en differentiates
between nonreturnables (photocopies)
and returnables (loans). The costs associ-
ated with handling these two types of
transactions are different.3 Table 2 shows
the CIC libraries’ ILL activity divided
between these two categories. Looking at
the table as a whole, no overall trends or
pa�erns emerged, although individual in-
stitutions may note significant changes.
Borrowing Turnaround Time
Transactions are completed more rapidly
between CIC libraries than between a CIC
library and a non-CIC library. Overall
turnaround time for borrowing requests
is an important measure of a library’s suc-
cess in filling patron requests quickly. It
also is one of the most difficult elements to
measure. Major discussion points revolve
around when the clock starts and stops
and whether time should be measured in
calendar days or business days. For this
report, turnaround time was measured
in calendar days from the time that ILL
staff sent a request to the first potential
supplier to the time that the requested
item was received in the borrowing ILL
office.4 Table 3 reports each institution’s
average turnaround time for both bor-
rowing and lending between July 2003
and March 2004.
The average turnaround time for filling
requests for returnables (loans) among
CIC libraries ranged from 6.5 to 13.7 cal-
endar days. Requests for nonreturnables
(generally articles delivered electronically
via Ariel) were filled in an average range
of 4.6 to 7.0 calendar days among CIC
partners. Comparable turnaround ranges
for receiving items from non-CIC libraries
were 7.6 to 17.6 days for returnables and
4.1 to 9.6 days for nonreturnables.
Many CIC ILL operations give prior-
ity handling to requests from other CIC
libraries. The CIC libraries commit to de-
livering articles electronically whenever
licensing permits; the group also uses an
express courier service for the transfer of
nonreturnables among institutions. The
authors believe that these practices result
in the faster turnaround time among con-
sortial partners.
Serials Holding Data in OCLC
Overall turnaround time for patrons
is reduced by first determining which
libraries hold the requested volume/year
of a serial and then sending requests
Challenges Facing High-volume Interlibrary Loan Operations 69
TABLE 2
Three-Year Comparison of
Photocopies versus Returnables on OCLC
FY 2001/2002 - FY 2003/2004
BORROWING LENDING
Photocopies
Received
Returnables
Received
Photocopy
Requests Filled
Returnables
Filled
Chicago (CGU)
FY02 3,880 9,262 6,902 17,274
FY03 3,841 10,848 5,832 18,722
FY04 (extrapolated) 3,669 5,849 7,988 21,008
UIC (IAY)
FY02 4,094 2,108 1,380 8,200
FY03 3,764 2,621 1,642 8,585
FY04 (extrapolated) 3,799 1,991 1,943 6,050
UIUC (UIU)
FY02 10,261 10,360 17,047 14,951
FY03 8,835 12,835 17,643 17,716
FY04 (extrapolated) 8,343 12,501 16,653 16,367
Indiana (IUL)
FY02 14,302 15,259 18,589 23,369
FY03 11,708 16,497 18,685 25,363
FY04 (extrapolated) 11,038 14,167 18,377 22,231
Iowa (NUI)
FY02 4,799 6,691 8,425 9,651
FY03 4,407 6,764 11,177 9,471
FY04 (extrapolated) 5,689 8,848 13,581 9,286
Michigan (EYM)
FY02 7,508 9,819 23,655 14,899
FY03 8,189 11,848 20,837 14,963
FY04 (extrapolated) 10,780 13,722 15,181 13,110
Michigan State (EEM)
FY02 24,300 7,633 18,841 11,665
FY03 23,570 8,240 19,924 13,574
FY04 (extrapolated) 21,195 6,920 19,763 14,263
Minnesota (MNP,MNU)
FY02 7,062 12,867 19,007 9,174
FY03 7,574 13,406 18,164 9,249
FY04 (extrapolated) 9,524 19,503 17,461 10,061
70 College & Research Libraries January 2006
TABLE 2 (CONTINUED)
Three-Year Comparison of
Photocopies versus Returnables on OCLC
FY 2001/2002 - FY 2003/2004
BORROWING LENDING
Photocopies
Received
Returnables
Received
Photocopy
Requests Filled
Returnables
Filled
Northwestern (INU)
FY02 14,048 10,057 4,415 10,567
FY03 12,441 12,286 6,968 11,444
FY04 (extrapolated) 10,868 12,216 9,975 10,340
Ohio State (OSU)
FY02 8,205 5,689 18,994 11,461
FY03 7,615 4,693 22,229 11,588
FY04 (extrapolated) 7,192 4,420 25,813 11,792
Penn State (UPM)
FY02 21,844 13,523 24,530 10,104
FY03 20,543 14,028 22,818 9,679
FY04 (extrapolated) 20,866 17,789 23,816 9,202
Purdue (IPL)
FY02 19,519 8,776 11,722 4,700
FY03 19,044 8,682 12,172 5,354
FY04 (extrapolated) 18,938 9,433 11,636 4,767
Wisconsin (GZM)
FY02 8,994 22,031 23,646 16,060
FY03 11,202 25,455 20,553 15,878
FY04 (extrapolated) 10,137 16,829 20,458 17,615
only to libraries that have indicated they
own the specific volume/year. OCLC’s
WorldCat is the bibliographic database
that ILL offices use to identify libraries
that own material. WorldCat provides
local data records (LDRs) to show specific
information about serial holdings at an
institution. Detailed LDRs allow borrow-
ing units to target the libraries that hold
the requested volume/number/year of a
serial. Lenders also benefit because they
then receive only requests for volumes
held in their collections, reducing lending
workload searching by no longer having
to say no to requests for material they do
not hold.
Table 4 shows the percentage of each
CIC institution’s serials for which LDRs
have been created and the fill rate for ILL
serial requests. There may be a correlation
between a low percentage of LDRs and a
low lending fill rate. These relationships
merit further study.
Ohio State University’s (OSU’s) expe-
rience illustrates the benefits of adding
LDRs to OCLC to lending photocopy fill
rate. In 1996, OSU’s fill rate for lending
photocopies was 46 percent; more than
half the requests received could not be
filled. ILL staff began creating LDRs for
specific frequently requested serials; by
2001, the fill rate improved to 58 percent.
Challenges Facing High-volume Interlibrary Loan Operations 71
In 2002, OSU arranged with OCLC to
batch-load almost 49,000 more LDRs;
as of 2004, the fill rate for copy requests
had increased to 65 percent. Two other
CIC libraries, the University of Illinois,
Urbana-Champaign, and the University
of Wisconsin, also have used OCLC’s
batch Local Data Record Updating Service
(LDRUS) to create LDRs.
OCLC also conducted a study of the
relationship between LDR data and ILL
fill rates. When libraries entered LDR data
for their top-requested serial titles, their
fill rates increased by a range of 3 to 33
percent. The fill rate increased in direct
proportion to the number and percentage
of the serials collection for which LDRs
were entered. In most cases, there also
was a decrease in overall ILL requests be-
cause libraries no longer received requests
for materials they did not hold.5,6
Access to WorldCat and these data is
widely available to our patrons as well.
Since December 2002, serials holdings
data have displayed in WorldCat. Serials
holdings are now seen by the public users
TABLE 3
Borrowing Turnaround Statistics (in calendar days)
July 2003–March 2004
Between CIC Flagship Libraries Other Libraries
CIC Flagship
Libraries Returnables
Non-
returnables
Average
CIC Returnables
Non-
returnables
Average
Other
Chicago
(CGU)
n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a
UIC (IAY) 6.9 7.0 7.0 11.1 8.5 9.8
UIUC (UIU) 13.7 6.7 10.2 17.6 8.9 13.2
Indiana (IUL) 7.4 6.9 7.2 8.0 9.6 8.8
Iowa (NUI) n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a
Michigan
(EYM)
7.1 5.8 6.5 13.2 5.8 9.5
Michigan State
(EEM)
7.2 4.5 5.9 10.3 9.5 9.9
Minnesota
(MNU,MNP)
n/a n/a n/a 8.2 5.2 6.7
Northwestern
(INU)
7.1 5.3 6.2 12.0 8.6 10.3
Ohio State
(OSU)*
n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a
Penn State
(UPM)
9.7 6.5 8.0 10.8 5.2 8.0
Purdue (IPL) 7.1 4.6 5.9 7.6 4.1 5.9
Wisconsin
(GZM)**
10.6 5.8 8.2 12.9 5.4 9.2
Requests taking over 60 days to fill have not been included in the numbers.
* OSU changed ILL software midyear and the data were incompatible between systems.
** The figures are a composite of the six ILL shops at UW-Madison. They were unable to
extract figures for flagship GZM.
72 College & Research Libraries January 2006
of the database as well as by ILL and seri-
als cataloging staff. Open WorldCat pro-
vides patrons with a new way of moving
from that database to the local catalog.
Borrowing Requests for Audiovisual
Material
The CIC ILL directors agree that patron
requests for audiovisual (AV) material
are increasing, although there is little
hard data because the ILL management
programs, such as ILLiad or Clio, group
AV loans together with all loans. The in-
crease in patron interest in AV titles may
be a�ributed to a combination of factors,
such as instructors using more recordings
in the classroom, film studies classes, and
students who learn be�er by listening to
or watching material than by reading.
Table 5 provides three-year overviews for
the increase in AV requests at the Univer-
sity of Iowa and Northwestern University,
the only two institutions that were able to
extract retrospective data for AV requests.
As a result of this study, most CIC ILL
offices have begun tracking AV requests
in their ILL management programs to
provide be�er data for future analysis.
Historical ILL practice has been that a
library should not request types of mate-
TABLE 4
LDRs (serial holdings data) in OCLC
July 2003–March 2004
Bibliographic
Records for
Serials
Serial
Bibliographic
Records with
LDRs
% of Serial
Bibliographic
Records with
LDRs
Lending Fill
Rate for ILL
Serial Requests
Chicago (CGU) 133,898 2,189 1% 37%
UIC (IAY) 27,850 0 0% n/a
UIUC (UIU) 202,511 69,359 34% 42%
Indiana (IUL) 115,855 33,542 28% n/a
Iowa (NUI) 45,365 5,247 11% 67%
Michigan
(EYM)
136,619 21,606 15% 45%
Michigan State
(EEM)
110,156 100,716 91% n/a
Minnesota
(MNU,MNP)
113,453 80,365 70% 62%
Northwestern
(INU)*
65,422 3,283 5% n/a
Ohio State
(OSU)
127,956 49,514 38% 65%
Penn State
(UPM)
68,660 40,119 58% 66%
Purdue (IPL) 69,163 1,453 2% 57%
Wisconsin
(GZM)
138,204 113,987 82% 67%
LDR data were taken from the OCLC Union List database, and the serial bibliographic
records were taken from the WorldCat database and are current as of March 2004.
* INU has significant additional serials for which their symbol is not listed in WorldCat.
Challenges Facing High-volume Interlibrary Loan Operations 73
loss or damage rate should not be any
higher than it is for books or microfilm,
and that rate is remarkably low given the
tens of thousands of items the CIC librar-
ies ship each year. ALA’s Guidelines for the
Interlibrary Loan of Audiovisual Formats
state as the basic principle: “Audiovisual
materials should be lent to other libraries
and agencies as freely as possible and in
a manner that insures that they are pro-
tected from loss and damage.”8
Although the ILL directors realize that,
as with books, AV items on reserve, on
hold, or part of expensive reference sets
may not be available for loan, the report
to the library directors suggested that this
is a good opportunity to review local AV
loan policies and to propose li�ing most
restrictions. Perhaps these materials ini-
tially could be lent only to CIC partners
and then the results of these changes
could be analyzed.
Reasons for No
Table 6 shows the top three reasons at
each institution for unfilled ILL lending
requests. In all libraries but one, over 22
percent of requests were unfilled because
rial from other libraries if it is not itself
willing to lend that material type. Because
members of one of our major resource-
sharing partners, the other CIC libraries,
did not generally lend AV material at the
time of the study, CIC ILL staff spent more
time trying to locate potential suppliers to
fill patrons’ AV requests than they spent
on requests for other material types. In-
stead of being able to fill these requests
by the second or third potential supplier
(as is typical for most other requests), ILL
staff o�en have to send the request to nine
or more potential suppliers before either
receiving the item (o�en from a library to
whom they would not have lent their AV
if asked) or giving up.7
The authors believe that the reluctance
to lend AV material may date back to the
days when these items represented new
technologies, when they were compara-
tively fragile, when rapid door-to-door
delivery service was not available, and
when AV material was both relatively
more expensive and harder to replace
than books. Today, the CIC ILL directors
question whether conservative AV “no-
loan” policies are still appropriate. The
TABLE 5
ILL Borrowing Requests for Video/DVD
# of Titles
Requested
# of
Requests
Placed
# of
Requests
Filled
% of
Requests
Filled
Average #
of Libraries
Tried
Iowa (NUI)
FY 2002 42 65 31 47% 5.1
FY 2003 86 108 53 49% 4.2
FY 2004 113 179 86 48% 5.4
Northwestern (INU)
FY 2001 38 52 23 44% 6.0
FY 2002 180 269 67 24% 7.5
FY 2003 178 312 71 22% 9.0
Some titles are difficult to obtain and require more than one OCLC request (5 potential
lenders per OCLC request) before they are filled.
Several CIC libraries observe that if you do not lend videos, it is harder to find libraries
that will lend to you. Iowa lends videos and Northwestern did not at the time of the study.
This could explain the differences in the success rates.
74 College & Research Libraries January 2006
the potential lending library lacked the
volume needed. Michigan State University
has only 17 percent of its lending requests
unfilled due to a lacking volume and has
created LDRs for 91 percent of its serial
records, giving this institution the best
number in both categories. The other major
reasons for no were that the material was
in use (in circulation to the library’s own
patrons); was noncirculating (reference,
course reserves, or special collections/ar-
chives); or was not on the shelf.
Service Trends in ARL Libraries,
1991–2003
The CIC is not alone in facing grow-
ing numbers of requests from its own
patrons as well as from other libraries.
The ARL statistics for 1991–2003 show
an increase in member libraries’ inter-
library borrowing of 113 percent over
those years. Appendix 2 compares the
changes in ILL activity to other service
trends in ARL libraries. For example,
total library staff in ARL libraries only
increased by two percent over the same
period whereas total student enrollment
increased 16 percent. It is important to
bear in mind that the ARL statistics count
completed ILL transactions only. ILL of-
fices in the CIC libraries and elsewhere
also have been handling a growing
number of patron requests for material
held locally.
TABLE 6
Top Three Reasons for No* for Unfilled Lending Requests
July 2003–March 2004
Lacking In Use Non-
circulating
Not on
Shelf
Cost
Exceeds
Other
Chicago
(CGU)
26% 14% 14% 25%
UIC (IAY) 24% 29% 10%
UIUC (UIU) 22% 10% 13%
Indiana (IUL) 22% 15% 24%
Iowa (NUI) 36% 14% 13%
Michigan
(EYM)
27% 16% 21%
Michigan State
(EEM)
17% 23% 15%
Minnesota
(MNU,MNP)
45% 15% 15%
Northwestern
(INU)
21% 28% 18%
Ohio St (OSU) 23% 14% 21%
Penn State
(UPM)
24% 21% 18%**
Purdue (IPL) 45% 21% 10%
Wisconsin
(GZM)
25% 18% 14%
* Each library ranked the three reasons it most often has to respond no to an ILL request.
** Item is located at another Penn State Library.
Note: Other reasons for no include “at bindery,” “incomplete citation,” etc.
Challenges Facing High-volume Interlibrary Loan Operations 75
TA
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le
s
%
O
w
ne
d
C
an
ce
ls
of
T
ot
al
R
eq
ue
st
ed
U
IU
C
(U
IU
)
FY
01
/0
2
36
,8
29
20
,1
34
16
,6
95
6,
30
5
17
%
2,
55
4
3,
75
1
64
7
44
5
1,
09
2
17
%
59
%
3%
FY
02
/0
3
41
,4
62
20
,3
50
21
,1
12
8,
63
6
21
%
2,
86
5
5,
77
1
1,
67
4
1,
30
6
2,
98
0
34
%
56
%
7%
FY
03
–3
/0
4
26
,6
64
12
,6
17
14
,0
47
6,
72
9
25
%
2,
90
0
3,
82
9
1,
71
6
80
7
2,
52
3
37
%
68
%
9%
In
di
an
a
(I
U
L
)
FY
01
/0
2
40
,1
11
19
,8
61
20
,2
50
7,
08
7
18
%
4,
14
4
2,
94
3
3,
46
5
1,
28
0
4,
74
5
66
%
73
%
12
%
FY
02
/0
3
38
,6
79
16
,6
33
22
,0
46
6,
22
2
16
%
3,
18
0
3,
04
2
2,
23
0
87
0
3,
10
0
49
%
71
%
8%
FY
03
–3
/0
4
30
,5
93
11
,6
15
18
,9
78
5,
15
3
17
%
2,
20
8
2,
94
5
1,
60
0
71
5
2,
31
5
44
%
69
%
8%
Io
w
a
(N
U
I)
FY
01
/0
2
n/
a
n/
a
n/
a
n/
a
n/
a
n/
a
n/
a
n/
a
n/
a
n/
a
n/
a
n/
a
n/
a
FY
02
/0
3
11
,4
76
4,
52
8
6,
94
8
4,
46
9
39
%
2,
16
1
2,
30
8
1,
15
0
79
0
1,
94
0
43
%
59
%
17
%
FY
03
–3
/0
4
11
,3
86
4,
18
5
7,
20
1
4,
54
4
40
%
2,
02
0
2,
52
4
1,
01
8
81
9
1,
83
7
40
%
55
%
16
%
O
hi
o
St
at
e
(O
SU
)
FY
01
/0
2
18
,9
13
10
,9
60
7,
95
3
6,
99
7
37
%
n/
a
n/
a
1,
74
8
91
9
2,
66
7
38
%
65
%
14
%
FY
02
/0
3
16
,4
41
10
,2
43
6,
19
8
3,
24
6
20
%
n/
a
n/
a
1,
82
3
67
0
2,
49
3
76
%
73
%
15
%
FY
03
–3
/0
4
14
,3
86
8,
78
1
5,
60
5
3,
61
0
25
%
n/
a
n/
a
1,
77
8
53
5
2,
31
3
64
%
76
%
16
%
Pe
nn
St
at
e
(U
PM
)
FY
01
/0
2
n/
a
n/
a
n/
a
n/
a
n/
a
n/
a
n/
a
n/
a
n/
a
n/
a
n/
a
n/
a
n/
a
FY
02
/0
3
42
,7
24
19
,9
15
22
,8
09
10
,7
74
25
%
5,
02
2
5,
75
2
2,
87
8
1,
54
3
4,
42
1
41
%
65
%
10
%
FY
03
–3
/0
4
50
,6
59
23
,7
70
26
,8
89
12
,8
09
25
%
5,
49
8
7,
31
1
3,
73
0
1,
65
2
5,
38
2
42
%
69
%
11
%
76 College & Research Libraries January 2006
Borrowing Requests for Locally
Available Material
Many users on CIC campuses place bor-
rowing requests that their local ILL offices
immediately cancel because the material
is available locally. Despite ARL’s interest
in filled ILL transactions only, many ILL
practitioners include requests for locally
available material in internal statistics.
It is difficult to count a transaction as
“unfilled” when, in fact, the ILL staff has
connected the patron with the requested
material. At research libraries, normal ILL
work flow includes thousands of these
“cancellations” each year, a considerable
effort in terms of decreasing patron wait
time and allocating staff time. Significant
cost savings are realized by not ordering
through ILL material that may be a few
clicks away on patrons’ desktops or avail-
able in their own library’s stacks.
Nineteen percent of borrowing re-
quests at all CIC libraries in FY04 were
unfilled and represent the median per-
centage. (See table 1.) For most libraries
surveyed, at least 25 percent of all bor-
rowing requests were cancelled because
of local availability (the range was 8 to
33% in FY04). Six CIC libraries supplied
data from the last three years on the total
number of borrowing requests received,
the total number of cancels, and a subtotal
of cancels made because the titles were
locally available. Table 7 shows that lo-
cally held items accounted for 37 to 69
percent of the total cancellations in FY04.
Although a review of each institution’s
individual data reveals few clear trends,
when viewed as a whole, these high
percentages reflect both a significant
expenditure of time and a high degree of
expertise on the part of ILL staff.
However, there is a clear pa�ern that
article requests rather than book loan
requests make up the majority of orders
for locally held materials. It seems that
as the number of electronic journals and
methods of remote access proliferate,
patrons are less able to identify all the
resources an institution holds. Patrons
who search their local online catalog may
TA
B
L
E
7
(C
O
N
T
IN
U
E
D
)
B
or
ro
w
in
g
R
eq
ue
st
s
C
an
ce
lle
d
(F
Y
01
/0
2-
F
Y
03
/M
ar
ch
0
4)
R
eq
ue
st
s
R
ec
ei
ve
d
A
rt
ic
le
L
oa
n
To
ta
l
C
an
ce
lle
d
%
R
ec
ei
ve
d
C
an
ce
lle
d
A
rt
ic
le
R
eq
ue
st
s
C
an
ce
lle
d
L
oa
n
R
eq
ue
st
s
C
an
ce
lle
d
A
rt
ic
le
s
C
an
ce
lle
d
as
O
w
ne
d
L
oa
ns
C
an
ce
lle
d
as
O
w
ne
d
To
ta
l
C
an
ce
lle
d
as
O
w
ne
d
%
o
f
O
w
ne
d
C
an
ce
ls
to
T
ot
al
%
O
w
ne
d
C
an
ce
ls
T
ha
t A
re
A
rt
ic
le
s
%
O
w
ne
d
C
an
ce
ls
of
T
ot
al
R
eq
ue
st
ed
Pu
rd
ue
(I
PL
)
FY
01
/0
2
50
,1
92
n/
a
n/
a
20
,4
93
40
%
n/
a
n/
a
n/
a
n/
a
17
,3
57
84
%
n/
a
35
%
FY
02
/0
3
44
,9
10
n/
a
n/
a
15
,5
04
35
%
n/
a
n/
a
n/
a
n/
a
12
,2
48
78
%
n/
a
27
%
FY
03
–3
/0
4
38
,7
01
n/
a
n/
a
18
,3
60
47
%
n/
a
n/
a
n/
a
n/
a
12
,8
28
69
%
n/
a
33
%
Challenges Facing High-volume Interlibrary Loan Operations 77
not also think to check their local e-journal
database or, even if they do, may not know
the correct title for the abbreviation in
their citation. Even patrons who diligently
check the catalog may miss a book if their
citation refers to a series title (for example,
Methods in Enzymology; Annals of the New
York Academy of Science; Proceedings of
SPIE), but the library catalogs each title
in the series separately (for example, Laser
Capture Microscopy and Microdissection;
Techniques in Bioinformatics and Medical
Informatics; or Micromachining Technology
for Micro-Optics and Nano-Optics II). These
reasons, coupled with easy 24/7 electronic
requesting, may mean that ILL offices now
receive requests that once would have
been mediated at a reference desk. Table 7
confirms that serial titles are more difficult
to identify and locate; users o�en turn to
ILL assuming that titles are not held.
Another trend not specifically reflected
in the tables is that of ILL staff finding
Internet sites for a small, but increasing,
number of ILL requests such as: journal
articles, conference papers, technical
reports, government reports (interna-
tional, federal, state, and local), working
papers, facsimiles of works too old to be
protected by copyright laws, association
publications, newsle�ers, dissertations
and theses; and more. Instead of having to
wait several days for an item, patrons now
sometimes are directed to PDF files within
a few hours of placing their request.
Thus, ILL staff have moved beyond their
traditional sphere of citation verification
and document ordering. Their skills now
include a more sophisticated degree of
reference work and patron instruction in
bibliographic sources.
Electronic Products Licensing and
Resource Sharing
Although much of the material re-
quested by ILL patrons in academic
libraries is covered by fair use, contract
law “trumps” the fair-use provisions of
the copyright law. Therefore, it is vital
that licensing agreements for electronic
products address resource-sharing issues.
When these licenses permit resource shar-
ing, they o�en contain requirements that
articles must be printed or that they may
not be transmi�ed electronically (for ex-
ample, via Ariel or Odyssey). Turnaround
time then increases significantly as the
lending and borrowing libraries spend
additional time printing, shipping, and
distributing a paper copy instead of an
electronic one.
The CIC model statement for electronic
licenses is a good example of suggested
license language rather than acceptance
of the providers’ standard restrictions.9
The ability to fill document requests from
electronic products in virtually the same
way as from paper products is critical in
(1) allowing everyone to serve as good
resource-sharing partners, (2) ensuring
that electronic products can be used by
one’s own campus’s distance education
learners and remotely located faculty,
and (3) maintaining resource-sharing
access to titles when paper subscriptions
are dropped or withdrawn in favor of
electronic ones.
About half the CIC libraries also
maintain a fee-based information service
catering to customers without access to the
library materials they need for business
or personal uses; e-journal license provi-
sions that clarify access and use for both
ILL and the fee-based services are critical.
At the moment, many electronic titles are
supplemented by paper subscriptions, but
as these are dropped (or never acquired),
fee-based services find themselves increas-
ingly unable to supply customers with
articles from on-campus sources.
Cataloging Practice Affects ILL
WorldCat serves to identify which insti-
tutions hold specific titles because the
promise of Z39.50 multicatalog searching
has not been realized. Accurate, complete,
institutional data in the OCLC system are
critical to support rapid, cost-effective
resource sharing and the full utilization
of our partners’ collections.
For books, but also increasingly for
other formats (such as audiovisual or
78 College & Research Libraries January 2006
microfilm where full cataloging may
not always have been possible), seeing
ownership information in OCLC allows
ILL staff to send requests to libraries that
hold the material. Maintaining this ac-
curate information includes removal of
an institution’s symbol from the OCLC
record when material has been lost as well
as adding holdings for the full collection.
This maintenance speeds the process of
supplying patrons with their material,
saves lending staff the time of handling
requests for material they cannot sup-
ply, and reduces the costs of requesting
items from libraries that no longer own
material. Although “not owned” was
not among the top three lending reasons
for no at any CIC institution, it is largely
a preventable reason, unlike “in use”
or “not on shelf.” Purdue University
recently removed its symbol from 4,000
OCLC records for items that had long
been missing from the collection; several
other CIC libraries are now following this
example to update their local catalogs and
to facilitate resource sharing.
For serials, choosing a lender that holds
the specific volume requested improves
turnaround time and reduces costs. In-
stitutions that enter and maintain LDRs
on OCLC are spared work responding
to requests to lend material they do not
hold, their resource-sharing partners en-
joy faster turnaround time, and their staff
can use more time filling requests rather
than saying no to them.
Because so many institutions have
faced serials cancellation projects, up-
dating LDRs on OCLC to close holdings
when a library no longer subscribes saves
lending staff time and helps borrowing
staff to obtain requested materials more
quickly. Although our libraries borrow
and lend heavily among their CIC part-
ners, all libraries benefit from this effort.
In addition, creating and maintaining
these serial-holdings records positions
a library to take advantage of future
resource-sharing systems and networks
that read and route citations at the volume
and issue level.
The Report’s Recommendations
The report illustrated that although insti-
tutional environments differ in ways that
affect resource sharing, each library works
toward similar goals. Gathering and ana-
lyzing the data highlighted the challenges
that ILL offices face and suggested areas
for further comparison and research.
The CIC ILL directors asked the library
directors to encourage all CIC institutions
to target areas where service improve-
ments can aid resource sharing:
• Revising policies so that more AV
material can be lent, such as videos, com-
pact discs, and DVDs
• Removing the institution’s symbol
on OCLC for material no longer in the
collection
• Creating and maintaining serials-
holdings information (LDRs) on OCLC
• Negotiating e-content licenses to
allow the best possible resource-sharing
provisions
Changes Resulting from the Report
Tangible results six months (November
2004) a�er the report was issued include
the following:
• Several libraries are adding more
LDRs to OCLC. This activity o�en in-
volves cooperative work between the
library’s ILL, technical services, and
information technology departments.
• Several libraries are conducting
catalog “cleanup” projects and removing
their OCLC symbol for material no longer
in their collections.
• About half the libraries will now
lend at least some of their AV titles.
Inspired by the report, a group at the
University of Minnesota is now looking
more broadly at the issue of instructional
media by reviewing current policies
and practices for collecting, making
accessible, and preserving this material. At
Pennsylvania State University, librarians
are now examining the current wide
variety of AV loan periods based on
library location; they hope to establish
a uniform AV loan period. Indiana
University increased the AV loan period
Challenges Facing High-volume Interlibrary Loan Operations 79
from fourteen to thirty days, the same
as for book loans. In revising its policy
about AV lending via ILL, Northwestern
University also is considering allowing
local patrons to check out videos; the
collection is currently noncirculating.
• Most CIC ILL offices now tag AV
requests in their ILL management systems
so that future statistics can be gathered
and analyzed.
• The University of Minnesota in-
creased the number of pages it will copy
from fi�y to seventy-five.
Patricia McCandless, assistant direc-
tor for public services at the Ohio State
University Libraries, summed up an
administrator’s reaction to the report by
writing:
The report confirmed the mutual
benefit of union listing journals, and
we are commi�ed to continuing that
project. By talking collectively about
the benefits of resource sharing
and recognizing that our protec-
tive instincts may not be in the best
interests of our patrons, our collec-
tion managers agreed to be more
generous in lending videos to both
the CIC and OhioLINK.10
Summary
The CIC ILL directors welcomed the
chance to present to our libraries’ top
administrators a picture of the chal-
lenges and opportunities in consortial
resource sharing. Preparing the report
for the library directors accomplished
many things.
First, it helped the CIC ILL directors
identify the major issues that affect every-
one’s ability to be effective and responsive
resource-sharing partners. Next, it helped
focus on the issues that were the most
important to convey to the library direc-
tors. The authors stated each challenge,
showed compelling consortia-wide facts
and figures, and recommended the most
effective actions to solve or ameliorate
those issues. Presenting common issues
collectively to top administrators carried
more weight than did individual efforts
at our home institutions.
The ability to provide “apples to
apples” data covering several years across
all institutions was a major accomplish-
ment. Not only could the authors look
at figures for their own institutions in
ways that perhaps had not been analyzed
before, but they also could benchmark
local data against those of their peers.
Each library director could see how his
or her own institution ranked within the
consortium on various resource-sharing
measures. These baseline data also can
be used for comparisons in any future
studies. For instance, if a follow-up study
were conducted in three to five years,
it could examine the impact of the ILL
policy revisions.
Finally, only six months a�er the li-
brary directors read and discussed the
report at their meeting, the ILL directors
see significant, positive changes in most
institutions on one or more of the four
major action items. Several libraries now
circulate selected AV material, are adding
more LDRs to OCLC, and are conducting
catalog cleanup projects. These changes
result in be�er access to each other’s col-
lections to meet patron needs for locally
unavailable research material.
Notes
1. The CIC is a consortium of major midwestern research universities, composed of the
members of the Big 10 athletic conference and the University of Chicago, stretching from Iowa
to Pennsylvania. (See appendix 1.) It coordinates many cooperative ventures among its members,
including the CIC Center for Library Initiatives (CLI). The CLI serves the thirteen research libraries
of the CIC and supports library-related collaboration ranging from archives to digital collection
development, including reference services and e-journal subscriptions (www.cic.uiuc.edu).
Among the CLI’s activities is the facilitation of an active group of the CIC’s ILL directors.
(See appendix 3.) This group communicates eight to ten times a year via conference calls and in
80 College & Research Libraries January 2006
person at the ALA’s midwinter and annual meetings. Our institutions have enjoyed a long his-
tory of no-charge reciprocal interlibrary borrowing and lending. Since 1998, the CIC has used a
courier delivery service (Lanter) to move returnable materials among our libraries, separated at
the widest point by 775 miles, usually within two days. Although all CIC libraries also participate
in other consortial groups, notably in-state initiatives, we all regard our CIC sister institutions
as major resource-sharing partners.
2. A�er much discussion, the authors decided to count the flagship campus libraries only, not
the regional or branch campuses or the separately administered libraries. This decision facilitated
the “apples to apples” comparisons the authors had hoped to make. CIC library directors gener-
ally administer only the flagship library systems, not the regional and/or specialized libraries, and
the full CIC reciprocity agreements extend to the flagship library systems only. A question might
arise about the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and the University of Illinois, Chicago,
campuses, but one is not a branch of the other. Instead, the University of Illinois is the only CIC
institution with two ARL libraries. The only exception was for the University of Minnesota; when
the report was wri�en, its St. Paul campus library had a separate OCLC code and filled a significant
number of borrowing transactions for the other campuses. Because the subject areas covered by
the St. Paul campus library were included under all the other libraries’ flagship OCLC codes, the
authors wanted to show the full picture for the University of Minnesota. Since the report was pub-
lished, the materials in this library have been transferred to Minnesota’s flagship OCLC code.
3. Mary E. Jackson, Assessing ILL/DD Services: New Cost-Effective Alternatives (Washington,
D.C.: ARL, 2004). The study results found that in 2002 the average ILL transaction cost for par-
ticipating ARL libraries was $26.78 ($17.50 spent by the borrower and $9.28 spent by the lender).
This publication mentions two CIC libraries, the University of Minnesota and the University of
Illinois at Chicago Health Sciences, as high-performing lending operations.
4. Table 3 reports the CIC borrowing turnaround statistics in calendar days between July
2003 and March 2004. Northwestern University and the University of Illinois, Chicago, use Clio
as their ILL management system and were able to use that so�ware’s system provided report to
obtain these figures. The rest of the CIC libraries use ILLiad. IT staff at the Purdue University
Libraries wrote a custom query that all CIC libraries using ILLiad ran against their data. Most
CIC libraries had moved to ILLiad during the year or two before July 2003, so this table captured
only nine months of data. Obtaining and then merging turnaround data from the old system
(Clio) and the new one (ILLiad) would not only have been tricky and time-consuming, but also
might have introduced elements of inaccuracy or inconsistency.
5. Cathy Kellum, “A Li�le SOUL Increases ILL Fill Rates,” OCLC Newsle�er (Nov./Dec. 2000):
33.
6. Anne Donohue, “ILL Fulfillment Study Focuses on Improving Fill Rates,” OCLC Newsle�er
(Nov./Dec. 2000): 34–35.
7. An unpublished study at the University of Michigan showed that 95 percent of all bor-
rowing requests are filled within the first three libraries listed in the OCLC lender string, 1988.
8 Available online at h�p://www.ala.org/ala/vrt/pubguidelines/guidelinesinterlibrary.
htm.
9. Available online at h�p://www.cic.uiuc.edu/programs/CLIConsortialAgreementProgram/
archive/BestPractice/StandardizedAgreementLanguageDec02.pdf.
10. E-mail communication to Susan Singleton, October1, 2004.
Challenges Facing High-volume Interlibrary Loan Operations 81
APPENDIX 1
CIC Institutions, 2004
Institution (OCLC Code)
Volumes
in Library
FTE
Library
Staff*
FTE Student
Enrollment**
Chicago (CGU) b L M 6,977,186 313 10,852
University of Illinois Chicago
(IAY)
M 2,198,873 242 21,124
University of Illinois,
Champaign, Urbana (UIU)
L 10,015,321 531 36,356
Indiana (IUL) G L 6,647,355 449 33,852
Iowa (NUI) L M 4,380,734 295 23,590
University of Michigan (EYM) L M 7,800,389 621 35,623
Michigan State (EEM) 4,582,004 277 37,961
Minnesota (MNP, MNU) b L M 6,200,669 405 33,880
Northwestern (INU) B L M 4,315,314 343 14,065
Ohio State (OSU) B M 5,674,784 405 41,940
Pennsylvania State (UPM) B L M 4,779,165 651 63,061***
Purdue (IPL) b 2,430,566 260 35,024
Wisconsin (GZM) L M 7,232,850 604 36,230
Total 73,235,210
b - Basis of volume count is bibliographic
B - Includes branch campuses
G - Government documents not included in serials count
L - Includes Law Library
M - Includes Medical Library
* Includes professional staff, support staff, and student assistants.
** Includes both undergraduate and graduate students.
*** Includes all regional campuses.
82 College & Research Libraries January 2006
A
P
P
E
N
D
IX
2
Se
rv
ic
e
Tr
en
ds
in
A
R
L
L
ib
ra
ri
es
, 1
99
1-
20
03
Challenges Facing High-volume Interlibrary Loan Operations 83
APPENDIX 3
CIC ILL Directors, 2004
Institution Name
University of Chicago James Vaughan
University of Illinois at Chicago Robert A. Daugherty
University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign Lynn Wiley
Indiana University Rita Rogers
University of Iowa Amy Fuls
University of Michigan Anne K. Beaubien
Michigan State University Denise A. Forro
University of Minnesota Elizabeth Ringwelski (lending)
University of Minnesota Cherie Weston (borrowing)
Northwestern University Barbara Smolow
Ohio State University Jennifer Kuehn
Pennsylvania State University Barbara Coopey
Purdue University Suzanne M. Ward
University of Wisconsin-Madison Judith L. Tuohy (borrowing)
University of Wisconsin-Madison Mary L. Williamson (lending)
84 College & Research Libraries January 2006