Performance of Interlending in Nordic Academic Libraries

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Performance of Interlending in Nordic Academic Libraries

Pentti Vattulainen

DRAFT 23.4.2003

Disposition:

Summary of findings

Introduction

-Background

-Related research

-The Nordic study

-Methods

-Steering group

-Participating libraries

On Nordic ILL environment

-Volume

-Union catalogues

-Delivery methods

-Changes in international ILL

-Charging

Measures for the performance of interlending

1. Turnaround time
2. Fill rate
3. Unit costs

Turnaround time for borrowing

-Elements of turnaround time

-Fast/slow libraries

-International ILL

Fill rate

-Fill rate for borrowing

-Fill rate for lending

Unit costs

-Concepts

-Staff costs

-Unit costs for borrowing

-Unit costs for lending

Identifying high-performing libraries

Discussion

Summary of findings

Summary / Euro €

Nordic

Total / Denmark / Finland / Iceland / Norway / Sweden
Borrowing unit costs / 12,56 / 9,35 / 15,90 / 12,74 / 10,89 / 15,50
Lending unit costs / 7,24 / 7,12 / 5,62 / 14,28 / 7,66 / 5,36
Combined unit costs / 19,8 / 16,47 / 21,52 / 27,02 / 18,55 / 20,86
Borrowing turnaround time / 10,5 / 15,6 / 7,1 / 10,5 / 8,4 / 11,1
in calendar days
Borrowing fill rate / 88,1 % / 85,5 % / 85,6 % / 91,7 % / 92,9 % / 86,1 %
Lending fill rate / 84,6 % / 92,6 % / 83,2 % / 90,7 % / 88,2 % / 75,3 %

Introduction

Background

The purpose of the study is to measure some features of Interlibrary Loan activities in Nordic research libraries. The general aim of the study is to produce information which can be used to improve the performance of ILL service capabilities of Nordic research libraries; to improve the status of ILL as a service-form by integrating it into other library functions, such as general circulation services, acquisition and reference; to advance resource sharing on the national and Nordic level; and to assist ILL departments to adopt new and effective work practices. Information about real costs makes it, furthermore, possible for the respective libraries to charge for the services on an appropriate level. As resource sharing is becoming increasingly essential for libraries for them to maintain a high service level all barriers in this process should be identified with the goal to eliminate them.

Related research

Performance measurement studies of interlending and document delivery activities originate from USA, where ILL and DD is a large-scale activity. Many surveys have been made there over the years. The most important is Mary Jackson’s study Measuring the Performance of Interlibrary Loan Operations in North American Research and College Libraries. (Mary E. Jackson. May 1998 * ISBN 0-918006-33-3 * 122 pp). There is also a study from Australia by the National Resource Sharing Working Group Interlibrary Loan and Document Delivery Benchmarking Study.

In recent years resource sharing has grown in importance because libraries are no longer able to collect comprehensively. Thus, libraries have developed new ways of sharing resources and are working on improving the old, traditional way, i.e., interlibrary loan. Interlibrary loan has become a critical success factor for libraries of all types. Its increasing importance has led to careful examination of how it is carried out.

The above-mentioned studies examined four items: costs, fill rate, time and user satisfaction. Direct costs mean costs that a library incurs to fill an ILL borrowing or lending request. Fill rate refers to the percentage of borrowing or lending requests successfully filled. The factor of time was measured in the number of calendar days it took to complete a borrowing request. Level of user satisfaction is measured by the speed of the borrowing service, quality and completeness of material as well as the interaction with ILL staff.

The studies also aimed at identifying high-performing ILL/DD libraries and see what could be learned from those, i.e., libraries that had low unit costs, fast turnaround time and high fill rate. The high-performing libraries were studied in particular and some recommendations were made.

The Nordic Study

The study was planned at meetings of the national ILL-group and the following framework was developed:

• The project should be conceived as a Nordic research project, project funding sought from NORDINFO. The results should be published and widely distributed;
• The sample performing libraries should be about 15 differently from the four big countries and 5 from Iceland;
• A steering group should be established, with a representative from each country, nominated by the national ILL-groups;
• The goals of the study could be similar to those of the ARL and Australian studies. The findings could be used to improve the performance of ILL in Nordic libraries;
• Project leader to analyse the data and write the report for NORDINFO

The board of NORDINFO decided to fund a study, which would collect basic data from the Nordic countries and compare these with the results from North America. NORDINFO listed the aims of the study as follows:

-improve performance of ILL service,

-improve the status of ILL as a service form,

-advance resource sharing,

-develop work practices,

-allow charging on an appropriate level,

-develop a toolbox to continuous evaluation of delivery develop statistics that answers to questions on meeting the mission, goals and objectives of libraries.

Methods

The study is a survey in two parts. The first part is a questionnaire concerning general characteristics of the library and on the costs of ILL activities. The general characteristics include questions on organisation and administration, staff structure, about level and type of activity, about equipment and software and about any local specialities in borrowing and lending. Information about costs is collected on staff, networks/communication, delivery, photocopy costs, equipment and software, borrower fees and library’s income from the service. The data was collected from the year 2000.

Second part of the study is the monitoring of the turnaround time during a fixed period of 5-6 weeks for approximately 150 randomly selected borrowing requests. This took place in spring 2001 - mostly between March and May.

Steering Group

The steering group has been nominated by the national ILL-groups. The members are Agneta Lindh (Sweden), Poul Erlandsen (Denmark), Thorny Hlynsdottir (Iceland), Hans-Martin Fagerli (Norway) and Pentti Vattulainen (Finland). The duties of the group include developing the questionnaire, translation of the questionnaire into own language and collecting of data from each country.

Participating Libraries

The members of the steering group choose the participating libraries in their countries. The libraries should be university libraries or other research libraries. They are supposed to be representative and different from each other. The participating institutions provide the information without cost to the research project.

The actual participation is in the table:

Nordic / Denmark / Finland / Iceland / Norway / Sweden
Unit costs / 44 / 7 / 8 / 3 / 18 / 8
Turnaround time / 49 / 10 / 7 / 4 / 19 / 9
Fill rate: borrowing / 38 / 9 / 7 / 3 / 13 / 6
Fill rate: lending / 36 / 7 / 8 / 3 / 11 / 7

In many countries there has been problems in participation. In Sweden the Union Catalogue LIBRIS changed its ILL system in spring 2001. This process tied the personnel resources in many libraries and they had to cancel their participation. In Finland the national library automation system of university libraries was renewed during the survey time.

In Denmark it was reported that the survey data was very difficult or even impossible to collect. This was partly because of the national statistical tradition (e.g. requests vs. filled transactions for borrowing and lending) and partly because of local way of collecting data from every day work. So the unit costs had to be estimated in many cases. This is true also in Norway, where ILL activities are combined with the general service. In Iceland the problem was small volumes and small amount of interlending libraries.

Terms:

• ILL, Interlibrary loan. The library operation that obtains materials for its patrons from other libraries and provides locally owned materials to other libraries and individuals.
• returnables: books and other items the lending library expects to be get back
• non-returnables: photocopies and other items the lending library does not expect to get back
• borrowing: obtaining materials to a patron of the own institution from another library
• lending: sending materials to another library
• document delivery: purchase of non-returnables from a company or service that supplies documents for a fee. Documents purchased from libraries with document delivery service are not included in the definition.
• reimbursements: unit costs of fees collected from local patrons (borrowing) and/or from other libraries (lending). Note that unit costs do not include the reimbursements received. Therefore, unit costs reflect gross costs, not net costs.

On Nordic ILL environment

Volume

Volume of ILL in the Nordic academic libraries is quite substantial. The following table illustrates this; from year 2000.

Incoming ILL requests / Home loans / Percentage of ILL
Nordic total / 2.024.997 / 25.038.921 / 8,1%
Denmark (KB and 19 research libraries) / 657.085 / 4.803.839 / 13,7%
Finland, university libraries / 172.061 / 9.794.607 / 1,8%
Iceland / 9.614 / 163.839 / 5,9%
Norway, Bibsys libraries / 485.074 / 3.806.898 / 13,7%
Sweden, research libraries / 659.533 / 6.469.739 / 10,2%

Nordic total is counted as a sum of country statistics. Denmark includes the Royal Library and 19 big research libraries and Finland all university libraries. Norway includes libraries, which participate in Bibsys co-operation. Sweden has the research libraries that are included in the national statistics. Iceland gives the research libraries.

The amount of home loans is quite uniform in big Nordic countries except in Finland, where the volume is high. The reliance on local collections is obvious. The reason is said to be in teaching and study methods that are still highly book dependant. The use of university libraries by the general public is also high. At the same time the volume of interlending is low. Obligatory fees were introduced to all interlending in1993. The volumes had been nearly on Nordic average level before that. In a year the volume fell from nearly 300 000 lending request to less than 200 000.

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The volume of transactions in the participating libraries is listed in the following table.

Nordic / DK / FI / IS / NO / SE
Borrowing / 9662 / 19285 / 6064 / 2299 / 12605 / 8058
% books / 40,8% / 53,1% / 24,1% / 24,6% / 50,4% / 47,9%
Lending / 26762 / 60358 / 16630 / 991 / 19340 / 34490
% books / 58,4% / 67,0% / 39,6% / 22,9% / 56,3% / 33,2%

The table shows generally that university libraries are net-lenders. The volume of lending is nearly three times higher than borrowing. The amount of books in interlending is still high: in borrowing 40% and in lending nearly 60%.

For borrowing the volumes are highest in Danish libraries. Also the share of books is high, as it is in Norway. Finland has very low borrowing volume. The amount of books is small. This reflects the assumption that especially books are not shared among Finnish libraries. In Iceland the amount of copies is also high.

For lending the volumes are again highest in Denmark. This is because there are some very big lending libraries. Again the share of books is high. In Sweden some of the biggest lending libraries are mostly sending copies, which can be seen in relatively low portion of books.

Union catalogues

All the Nordic countries have Union Catalogues for university libraries. Generally the objective of an UC is to use it for information retrieval, to locate material for ILL purposes and to participate in shared cataloguing. ILL facilities are not necessary well developed. The Union Catalogues of Sweden (Libris), Denmark (Danbib) and Norway (Bibsys and Sambok, Samper) have ordering facilities. The Norwegian Union Catalogues show status of holdings information. Icelandic Gegnir and Finnish Linda support interlending only as a locating tool.

The Union catalogues are usually free of charge. The exception is Linda, which is a fee-based. Danbib is free for cardholders.

Nordic Union catalogue of Serials (NOSP) contains holding information from more than 1000 libraries and gives access to more than 350.000 serials. It covers all subject areas with emphasis on natural and social sciences and medicine and is especially rich in serials published in the Nordic countries. In 2000 NOSP added serial information from two Baltic States. NOSP is freely available for searching but there is a charging fee for transferring orders. The holding libraries that participate in the ILL services NORFRI, NORDKVIK and ARIEL are now clearly marked.

Scandinavian Virtual Union Catalogue is a new initiative. It aims at making make the Nordic physical union catalogues available as a single unified service and thus to speed delivery. The project concentrated in2000 on technical issues but will later also deal with political matters. SVUC should be available for free Z39.50 basics.

Delivery methods

Mail and fax have been the main delivery methods. The (copyright)legislation has been interpreted in most Nordic countries not to allow electronic delivery methods. Even the possibility to use of G4 fax has been discussed in some countries. Only in Finland electronic methods are in general use. In 2000 Ariel was commonly used for delivery. Adobe's PDF-files were also used in some libraries.

Many libraries do not even accept electronic document delivery from abroad even though the supplier would be ready to send copies electronically.

To make service faster project NORDKVIK was started at the end of 90-ies. The aim was to encourage the use of other fast delivery methods than electronic. This meant the use of fax and first class postal services.

Changes in international ILL

British Library Document Supply Centre has been the most important supplier for the Nordic countries. It has had many consequences on Nordic libraries and library co-operation. It was one of the reasons to abandon the Scandia Plan that aimed at co-operative collection development in the Nordic countries.

There are however signs of change. The German Subito has become an important source for ILL in the last years. In 2000 many libraries began to use it mainly because of cheap prices and fast digital delivery.

There are still some ILL regulations on ordering procedures in some countries. Many university and research libraries do not any more follow these but do searching and ordering themselves from the beginning.

Charging

Interlending has traditionally been free of charge in the Nordic countries. In Finland the tradition changed in 1993 when all publicly financed libraries were ordered to charge for all services which were not regarded as basic services. Interlending was one of these.

In other countries there were no legislation-based fees. To make it possible to have free ILL services the net-lending libraries were supported in Sweden by the government. In Norway services are free of charge. In Denmark libraries are allowed to charge for ILL-services.

NORFRI- project was started at the end of 90-ies. The aim was to establish library network that does not charge from each other. There were about 200 libraries from 7 countries in NORFRI in 2000.

Charging for ILL has gradually become more popular among libraries. In 2000 many libraries charged varying sum, mainly to cover mailing costs.

Measures for the performance of interlending

There are some studies on the performance of interlending in terms of efficiency or effectiveness. One of the earliest was a study by the Association of Research Libraries (USA) in 1972. It included data on characteristics, costs and magnitude. A UNESCO publication "Measuring the performance of document supply systems" (1987) lists three measures: fill rate, speed and user satisfaction. The publication also lists other factors that affect to library performance. These are e.g. volume of demand, range of resources available, ease of use and quality. Cost is the most relevant factor that must be involved.

Other studies were published in 1992 in USA by ARL, 1998 again by ARL (Jackson) and 2001 in Australia. The last ones had four measures: fill rate, turnaround time, unit costs and user satisfaction. The studies also aimed at identifying criteria for high performance by benchmarking to identify best practises. Benchmarking criteria were in borrowing high fill rate, fast turnaround time, low unit costs and high user satisfaction. Lending was studied to identify low unit costs and high fill rate.

A EU publication “Library performance indicators…” makes a distinction between measures and indicators. Measures can be measured directly; indicators are inferred from one or many measures. (Library…, (1995), p 69). Measures for interlibrary loans are listed as costs (external cost of inter library loans service) and use. The publication proposes the following indicators: timeliness (time taken to satisfy ILL requests), use (proportion of inter library loans to total issues) and population (ILL per capita).

The steering group chose to the Nordic study measures fill rate, timeliness and unit costs. The idea was to compare the results with those of latest American and Australian studies. User satisfaction as a direct study object is not included. A test of questionnaires and turnaround time survey form was conducted in summer 2000 in two Finnish university libraries (first small, second big legal deposit library).

This study aims at benchmarking Nordic library environments on two levels. The first is to identify such differences between countries that may have influence on the performance of ILL activities of libraries, e.g. charges, digital delivery methods. The second is to benchmark libraries and to try to identify well-performing ILL operations and to explain why they perform so well.