[ILL-L] ARL Releases White Paper on Interlibrary Loan

[Geneva Holliday]

Hello,
Thought many of you would be interested in this press release from ARL.
geneva

ARL Releases White Paper on Interlibrary Loan

ARL has released a white paper on interlibrary loan (ILL) written by 
Anne K. Beaubien, Director, Cooperative Access Services, University of 
Michigan Library. The paper analyzes trends in ILL activity in US 
academic and research libraries over the past two decades. ILL activity 
has increased over this period, primarily due to growing requests
for returnable items (e.g., books, audiovisual items, microfilms) as 
opposed to non-returnables (e.g., copies of journal articles, conference 
papers). The author finds that ILL transactions have increased due to 
several factors, including a growth in Web-based discovery tools as well 
as efforts by libraries to simplify the ILL process and improve delivery 
options, thus decreasing the turn-around time for requests. 
Additionally, many research and academic libraries have been 
hard-pressed to maintain adequate collections budgets in the face of 
skyrocketing prices, so they must rely more on ILL for little-used 
materials. The paper also provides a description of current ILL 
practices for borrowing requests, most of which are placed via the OCLC 
WorldCat Resource Sharing system.

The white paper is freely available on the ARL Web site at 
http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/ARL_white_paper_ILL_june07.pdf.

For more information about the white paper, contact Prue Adler, 
Associate Executive Director, Federal Relations and
Information Policy, prue at arl.org.

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Kaylyn Groves
Managing Editor, Web Content
Association of Research Libraries
21 Dupont Circle NW #800
Washington DC 20036
tel: 202.296.2296
fax: 202.872.0884
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Geneva R. Holliday <ghollida at email.unc.edu>
Interlibrary Services Librarian
Voice: (919) 962-0077  Fax: (919) 962-4451
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
CB#3924, Davis Library / Chapel Hill, NC 27514-8890
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"We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."
						    B. Franklin, 1776