Abstract
The state of inter-library lending (ILL) in the world today is placed in the context of the still developing electronic publishing environment: in particular the impact of the big deals, open access and retrospective conversion of serial back-files which have contributed to the dramatic decline in ILL over the last ten years. The factors that influence developments in ILL are identified and analysed. The robust state of ILL and document supply in the US, or American ‘exceptionalism’, will be considered briefly. The continued importance of the inter-lending and document supply service is stressed, given the background of reduced library budgets, increasing serial prices and increasing demands from more researchers for material not held locally. Reference is made to developments in various countries, especially the UK, Denmark, the US and The Netherlands.
Highlights
Introduction and overviewIn 1992, the author celebrated with the British Library’s (BL’s) French agent the Library’s reaching the £1 million target for inter-library lending (ILL) sales in France – maybe only one banker’s bonus today, but vital for the BL’s financial health at that time
Back in 1999, the British Library predicted this impact when looking at the future of the Document Supply Centre (BLDSC)
Some fascinating data on downloads was uncovered. It showed that very large numbers of titles were all the current literature – affordable only by the richest libraries – combined with the vast amount of non-digitized literature would argue not used at all and a further number were used so little that ILL would be that ILL will remain a cost-effective substitute to subscription
Summary
In 1992, the author celebrated with the British Library’s (BL’s) French agent the Library’s reaching the £1 million target for ILL sales in France – maybe only one banker’s bonus today, but vital for the BL’s financial health at that time. The volume of ILL requests continued to rise at the BL, often at 20-30% a year until levelling out in 1999 at about four million requests a year; it declined to about 1.5 million by 2011. The BL is still the largest document supplier in the world, mainly because this decline is a pattern reflected worldwide – except for the US, which will be discussed later What caused this dramatic decline and is ILL still relevant today?
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