[ILL-L] Average cost of providing a book through ILL

[Robinson, Arthur]

Thanks for the information.  At my library, we have no ILL position as such; I'm the Reference Librarian, and ILL is one of my "additional tasks" (along with library instruction, collection development, liaison work, etc.)--in fact I do a lot of my ILL work on evenings and weekends.  (But I do now have help with packing.)  
 
Arthur

________________________________

From: ill-l-bounces at webjunction.org on behalf of Mary Lehane
Sent: Fri 8/15/2008 3:06 PM
To: morrislr at niagara.edu; Interlibrary Loan Listserv
Subject: Re: [ILL-L] Average cost of providing a book through ILL


Based on the fact that, on average, staff costs account for 75% of the total of ILL costs, Mary Jackson, in her ARL presentations on ILL performance, used to provide a little worksheet that you could use to do a rough estimate of your costs. Basically you calculate the salaries of all the staff who do ILL work (ordering, shipping, and so on), take 75% of that and then you use a simple formula to calculate your total costs. Divide by your fills and you'll have your average cost. I'm no mathematician, but some of you can probably figure out the multiplier to do this.
(Also, for Leslie, some of us Canadian libraries now have a work/study program, where the government will supply funds for student workers. I now manage to get half my student workers' salaries paid through this program. Some years ago when we participated in the ARL ILL measures/costs surveys, we had to pay the full salaries for student assistants.)

Mary Lehane at YOU

Leslie R. Morris wrote: 

	Because wage rates vary widely, cost figures from one institution, or even a group of institutions, make comparisons difficult. For instance, New York City salaries vs. Hattiesburg, MS hourly rates. 
	
	If a survey measured minutes per task, (wrapping a package = 12 minutes) then you could translate the minutes into the wage rates your library pays and have useful figures. Don't forget fringe benefits. Creating average task times is time consuming, but not impossible.
	
	Costs in a library can change rapidly.If you have a $20,000.00 per year staff member in charge of an ILL office that processes 10,000 transactions, and you remove the supervisor, you have just reduced cost by $2.00 per transaction.
	
	Since wages are the biggest ILL cost, cutting or down grading staff changes ILL costs dramatically although I do not recommend that. 
	
	Most of the average cost figures for ILL, that I have seen, are difficult to compare to other libraries. Canadian libraries have no work study students. They must pay real salaries for all of the tasks that US libraries accomplish for little cost. Their costs are much higher.
	
	Les
	
	

	Leslie R. Morris

	Founder and Editor

	The Journal of Interlibrary Loan, Document Delivery & Electronic Reserve

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-- 


Mary Lehane

Manager, Resource Sharing Department

207 Scott Library, York University

4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3J 1P3

 

Phone: (416) 736-5808 Fax: (416)736-5920

Ariel: 130.63.180.22 E-mail: mlehane at yorku.ca

 

http://www.library.yorku.ca/ccm/ResourceSharing/ServicesForYork/index.htm

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