4+ things you need to know

about Interlibrary Loan

Getting Content When It’s Not Online:

Document Delivery & Interlibrary Loan

1. Interlibrary Loan (ILL) borrows and lends resources through various resource sharing systems
world-wide including ArticleReach and ILLiad.
2. In 2008-2009, WSU Library users requested 51,429 articles with 93% delivered.
3. Easy-to-use tools help library users get articles electronically on the Library Web site:

Citation Linker

4. How fast a request is filled varies dramatically and depends on some of the following factors:
• System used: try ArticleReach first (25 hours turnaround), ILLiad second (10 days).
• Bibliographic data: citation information should come from a database, but if a request must be
manually entered, include title, journal title, ISSN, year, volume and page numbers, at the very
least.
• How many libraries own the material: more is better. As the number of libraries owning your
resource increases, so do the chances of getting a copy or loan.
• Original journal, book or other resource: Is it old, brittle or falling apart? Is it in print or digital or
16mm film? Is it rare? Your access to the content you want is inversely related to the lending
library’s cost of providing access and risk of damaging the content.

Content Delivery

Responsible for resource delivery and communication derived from mediated and patron initiated request
systems.
Interlibrary Loan: Borrows and lends resources through various resource sharing networks world-wide.
Creates and distributes licensed content through various document delivery platforms.
Course Content Management: Assists faculty document postings to various course content management
systems such as Blackboard and Millennium.
Materials Storage: Houses, protects and provides access to library collections permanently stored in
off-site areas.

Goals
• Operate with the highest degree of efficiency possible under legal and best practice standards,
utilizing technology to create and promote the fastest methods of service delivery with the best
quality possible through automation.
• Actively seek to improve, or discover new and innovative ways of providing services to improve
service performance measures.
• Seek new and consistently utilize existing partnerships with internal and external customers to
improve auxiliary systems that impact services (e.g. OCLC LHR Holdings, E-Resource
management, Millennium).
• Ensure policies and procedures are as transparent as possible, and seek to communicate
necessary information for the sake of service completion in consistent, instructive and neutral
methods to all contacts and customers.
Key Indicators
• Primary measures of performance are:
• Fill Rates
• Turn-Around-Times
• Quality of service delivery
• Costs
• Customer Satisfaction

Recent Notable Changes in ILL Borrowing

Within the past year, specific changes have reduced the need for and complexity of the borrowing
processes of ILL. The most pertinent technological changes are as follows:

• Open-URL resolvers and Serials Solutions ArticleLinker partnership with Google Scholar to assist
in the discovery of online resources.
• Millennium ArticleReach allows unmediated requesting of articles from WSU to other
institutions automatically.
• Library increased expenditures on full-text resources.
• ILLiad custom holdings groups/paths created in 2009 allows auto searching for requests to
institutions holding matching serials in OCLC if ISSN is entered on request.
• ILLiad custom holdings groups/paths created in 2009 allows auto searching, matching request
creation and sending of book requests in OCLC if ISBN is entered on request.
• Activated “Odyssey trusted sender” feature allows direct sending from lending institution to
borrower automatically without mediated review of scans.

Impact
• ArticleReach and MeLCat reduce borrowing workflow 100%, except for receiving mail .
• MelCat is used 4.7 times that of ILLiad, saving the University 200+ hours of staff time.
• ILLiad is used 1.13 times that of ILLiad, costing the University 500+ hours of staff time.
• Searching online first reduces workload by 98%, 40% of the time, by negating steps 2-7 of the
borrowing workflow process (saves 400+ hours per year).

Challenges
• Directing patrons to the most effective discovery platform to locate available online resources
as 40% of incoming requests in ILLiad are already available to users online.
• Incorrect citations and broken links in ArticleLinker that misdirect patrons
• Incorrect and inaccurate OCLC holdings misdirect staff and delay borrowing processing
• Libraries across the world are cutting subscriptions to print resources which will leave WSU with
fewer options to borrow resources and thus, more reliant upon on-demand purchasing from
rights-holders.
• Libraries do not typically display holdings for electronic resources in OCLC, which reduces the
integrity of the request system and increases turn-around times.
• Non-OCLC suppliers reduce access to resources and increase workflow demands placed on
Interlibrary Loan units, increasing turn-around times and reducing fill-rates.
• Most ILL operations use outdated technology that do not match licensed resources in terms of
quality.