[ILL-L] Unfilled request numbers

Wed Aug 27 13:20:28 EDT 2008

Hi all,

Our fill rate has held steady at about 55% for years now.  I think the most
important thing to bear in mind about this number is that as a statistic it
is only meaningful when compared to your own lending data -- i.e., it's a
relative stat whose absolute value shouldn't get you worried one way or the
other.

That being said, we're always trying to find ways to eke our fill rate
upward.  We're hoping that a long-overdue OCLC holdings reclamation should
help in this regard, and I continue to push to get our serials holdings
listed in WorldCat (though that's more of a long shot, at least for the time
being).  We also look closely at our monthly deflections to see if there's
any material types we may want to reconsider.

Another way to improve your fill rate is to know your copyright laws, both
domestic and international.  Quite often there is more leeway for
interpretation than you'd think, and there are many library materials out
there whose copyrights were allowed to elapse and are now considered to be
in the public domain.  Help your staff to identify these types of "maybe"
requests and see if you can't find a way to get them to "yes".

We also work closely with our Preservation staff to fast-track simple
conservation work in order to make items in borderline condition able to
circulate.  Standards of what may circulate and what may not tend to go in
conservative/liberal cycles, and what may have been coded as non-circulating
several years ago may be considered perfectly fine for ILL now.  Again this
is matter of getting your staff to be proactive in this regard.

It can be far too easy at times to err on the side of "no", especially when
you're in a high-volume operation and too much interpretation on the part of
the staff and your ILL head can gum up the works.  But bear in mind that
when you take the time to negotiate this gray area not only are you bumping
up your own fill rate (and IFM balance if you charge!), but you're helping
the requesting library obtain a resource that they may not be able to obtain
elsewhere.  And positive resource sharing karma is always a good thing!

Best,
Tom Bruno
Head of Interlibrary Loan
Widener Library
Harvard University

2008/8/27 Thompson, Cynthia Marie <thompsoncym at umkc.edu>

>  We don't keep track of this, although it's pretty easy to figure out
> since we DO track the number of requests we process (an accurate accounting
> of how much work we do) and the number of requests we fill.  Our fill rate
> was absolutely terrible last year (and has been for several years) because
> two major collections were assigned to our OCLC symbol that we couldn't fill
> – our Sound Archive, which gets a huge number of requests, and our Health
> Sciences Library, which accounted for at least 35% of the lending requests
> we received last year.
>
>
>
> We've gotten the Health Sciences materials transferred over to their OCLC
> symbol, so our fill rate should go up by quite a bit.  I'm still exploring
> other ways we can improve our fill rate, not so we'll have better stats, but
> so we will waste less time processing requests that we would never fill.  I
> understand there's an option to designate collections during cataloging,
> which can then be deflected, but I've asked a lot of our cataloging staff
> lately, so that will have to wait…
>
>
>
> I'm interested to see how others handle this!
>
>
>
> Cindy Thompson
> Interlibrary Loan & Reference Librarian
>
> UMKC Miller Nichols Library (UMK)
> 816-235-1511
>
> thompsoncym at umkc.edu
>
> http://library.umkc.edu
>
>
>
> *From:* ill-l-bounces at webjunction.org [mailto:
> ill-l-bounces at webjunction.org] *On Behalf Of *Robinson, Arthur
> *Sent:* Wednesday, August 27, 2008 10:42 AM
> *To:* Interlibrary Loan Listserv
> *Subject:* RE: [ILL-L] Unfilled request numbers
>
>
>
> I don't have statistics for our library--I kept track of unfilled requests
> (and the reasons for them) many years ago, but was then told not to
> bother--but I suspect your numbers are normal.  I'm curious to hear from any
> libraries that have numbers on these.
>
>
>
> But please, DO put items in WorldCat even if they don't circulate.  In my
> personal research, I have encountered several items of interest in
> WorldCat that I can't get on ILL, but in some cases I've been able to visit
> the libraries on my travels, and I have a list of manuscript items and the
> like that I hope to see someday (in places like Minneapolis and Rochester),
> though that probably won't happen until I retire.  Also, when faculty say
> they need something and you can't get it, I think it's good to be able to
> tell them that it's in such-and-such a library but doesn't circulate; maybe
> they can get there, or have a friend there who can look up the information
> they need (and if not, at least it shows you're not blowing them off).  A
> third reason is that it's useful to have citation information readily
> available.  I wish I'd had access to WorldCat in my graduate school days
> nearly 30 years ago.
>
>
>
> Arthur Robinson (GLG)
>
>
>  ------------------------------
>
> *From:* ill-l-bounces at webjunction.org on behalf of Andrew Shuping
> *Sent:* Wed 8/27/2008 11:04 AM
> *To:* Interlibrary Loan Listserv
> *Subject:* [ILL-L] Unfilled request numbers
>
> Hi all,
>
> I'm looking for some information and wondering what everyone else does
> regarding unfilled lending requests (requests that we aren't filling
> as lenders).  Our numbers always seem really high for unfilleds.  For
> example for July we had 202 requests, but we only filled 112 of them.
> It's been about 30%-40% unfilled for the last few months.
>
> Some of this stems from collections we don't lend but are loaded into
> OCLC.  For example we have Special Collection records uploaded and
> Media Center items, none of which we lend.  We also have 3 Center
> libraries that are cataloged under our symbol, but we don't lend from
> any of those collections.  We keep adding material to these
> collections and all of them are uploaded to OCLC.  I can easily
> auto-deflect the media items, but it still counts toward unfilleds.
>
> I dislike having that many unfilled requests because I know it costs
> staff time to find libraries that own the item, only to have them not
> be able to fill it.  So I'm looking for some advice.  Are my numbers
> normal?  How do you handle collections that you can't lend?  Do you
> put them on OCLC?  Do you catalog them under a separate symbol on
> OCLC?
>
> Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!
>
>
> --
> Andrew Shuping
>
> Robert Frost - "In three words I can sum up everything I've learned
> about life: it goes on."
>
>
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