"Tying collection development's loose ends with interlibrary loan"

Kolthoff, Katherine

Ruppel, M. (2006). Tying collection development's loose ends with interlibrary loan. Collection Building, 25(3), 72-77.

Summary: This research paper reports the process and findings of a study done by the author regarding Southern Illinois University Carbondale's Morris Library, exploring the viability of ILL as a means to expand collections. Morris Library is capable of borrowing from the I-Share catalog, the ILL request system for the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI). The author's study intended to identify the characteristics and overall quality of ILL-borrowed titles in the library, and answer whether ILL data is a viable tool in collection development. To do this, she collected and sorted the entries Morris Library borrowed from the I-Share catalog for the year of 2004, filtering for education and psychology titles, then sorted their reviews where they were available by "positive", "mixed", "negative", and "descriptive". 60% of the reviews collected were positive, 23% mixed, 10% "descriptive", and 7% negative overall. This pattern was mirrored when the author breaking down the titles by discipline. Regarding title characteristics, approximately two-thirds of the materials borrowed were published within five years of the study, and on average cost about fifty dollars. Additional findings suggest that that the ILL materials ordered were generally in good condition, and arrived in an acceptable span of time. The author, after some further analysis, concludes that ILL makes a cost-effective tool in both in serving patrons more effectively and in the consideration process for new additions to the collection; that said, she holds that ILL as an assessment tool really does need to be employed in conjunction with more traditional methods of construction.

Reflection: There are a number of interesting points and observations to take from this article. Firstly, this study had been done in 2004, yet since then Inter-Library Loans have become a staple of modern public and academic libraries, even as the increasingly mainstream access to electronic resources and e-books. (Clearly, despite competition, the utility of the ILL system has not waned.) Secondly, it is interesting that although 18,322 items were borrowed through I-Share, only 574 titles (3.13%) addressed the school's main academic disciplines. Although she suggests that the demand on those titles indicates that they need to add more of these genres to the collection, I wonder if she has grasped that the numbers mean that 96.97% of all ILL orders at the Morris Library have been for other subjects—that is to say, that they should be adding more titles in areas other than Education and Psychology. Yes, all the Education and Psychology titles may have been circulated through ILL at least one time, but considering the imbalance, it seems to suggest they need to reevaluate the quality of their own core collections.

Another point that bears reconsideration, especially now in the Amazon Age, is her assertion that "if a title can be purchased and received just as quickly (or quicker) as if it had been borrowed through ILL, and it fits the library's collection development policy, the library should purchase it." Let's face it, folks: with one-day shipping, purchasing will always win out in the speed factor. At this point, mere speed of purchase cannot be taken as an indicator that a library should purchase something rather than use ILL, or libraries following that philosophy would quickly run up their budget. Significant speed of purchase, or an extended waiting list for a title, should still factor in, but I feel she is incautious in suggesting a Buy-on-Demand program based on ILL requests.

However, she makes an intriguing observation in her argument for a BOD program that seems especially salient for the modern library: "Adding a title to the library collection benefits the library's community of users, not just one patron at a time, as in the case of interlibrary loan. Purchasing an item for a library provides an asset, or an investment, for the community to use in the future." (76) True, but perhaps she is not taking it to its full extent? As a lifelong resident of San Diego, I've been witness to the region's ILL, the Circuit, which enables print media to be borrowed between two UC system, one private, and one CalState university, and both the City and the County's public library systems. Of these, the university libraries all are involved in additional ILL programs through their own system connections. Thus, I feel it is worth considering whether purchases also need to be considered within the context of their ILL communities—since, through ILL, a library's community is not the only one that may benefit from the purchase. Such considerations already occur in UC system libraries—UCSD has a remarkable East Asian studies collection, but relatively little in the way of traditional subject matter: realizing that Berkley and UCLA had that segment covered, they focused their collection on contemporary history and issues. Such niche development may seem obvious, but when we are facing widespread budget cuts and competition to print media (although electronic resources may be a good means to bypass the wait that transporting physical items between libraries requires), every penny-saving measure counts. I know that this may sound hypocritical, given that just above I suggested updating their core collections, but again, that issue of disparity, but again, she is correct in the ability of a purchase to benefit the community as a whole—and thus, given their status as a sub-segment of a larger community, even that won't be a waste of resources.

The Library Collection as Service

Mejdrich, K. (2014). The Library Collection as Service. OLA Quarterly, 17(3), 7-8. http://dx.doi.org/10.7710/1093-7374.1328

Karen Mejdrich works for the Hillsboro Public Library in Hillsboro, Oregon, in this short article she shares her success and failures with the amount of time it takes for a patron to get the item they are looking for. She did a time study on patron Inter-Library Loan requests. There were two different models that Karen looked into to make sure that the ILLs requested where getting into patrons hands as soon as possible, making sure to provide the best customer service for the patron. After running two different time studies on their ILL requests and purchase requests, Karen was able to find a model that worked for her library to reduce the average processing time of an ILL of 21 days to 12 days when an item could be automatically purchased.

Mining and Analyzing Circulation and ILL Data for Informed Collection Development

Poster: Curtin, Shane

Link, F. l., Tosaka, Y. t., & Weng, C. W. (2015). Mining and Analyzing Circulation and ILL Data for Informed Collection Development. College & Research Libraries, 76(6), 740-755.


Summary:

This article describes how one library tried reviewed ILL usage and  borrowing statistics for their academic journals in an attempt to asses the strength of their own collection. They drew on circulation data for each LOC class and compared it across a variety of factors. The results were more complex than they had expected. The question posed by their results was not what specific items to buy, but what subject areas to buy for.  They also realized that user preferences for different material types (such as digital journals versus print journals) could not be inferred through the aforementioned methods of study, since people will tend to order whatever is available. The researchers concluded by proposing a further study to address this question, and to establish benchmarks for collection use as it relates to purchasing. How much circulation should be expected for every dollar spent?


Analysis:

In my own library the ILL librarian does not fraternize much with the selectors. The number of ILLs we receive is small and seldom do we get more than one request per item in any considerable span of time. Due to our library’s membership in LINK+ we already have access to the catalogs of most Californa and Nevada libraries; most items can be obtained this way. We DO look at Link+ circ stats to see if we should order something, but not at ILL stats. Most ILL orders are for rare and old-out of print items anyway, not thing we could get our hands on even if we wanted to. Even so, this study was interesting vis-a-vis the content of our class. At the end of the study the author noted that the study is not to be taken as just an investigation of their own circulation, but as a parable of the effectiveness of using circulation stats as  collection development metric.

They of course, used LC call numbers as subject identifiers. While this is not the method recommended by this class, it is the only one available to most libraries, lest they choose to tag their records by subject collection, as we have been doing. In order for circulation data to be valuable to collection development in this sort of arrangement, a new field of some sort would have to be added in item records, denoting their collection grouping. An alternate method that occurs to me is to try and mine the subject data from the MARC 650 fields, but the variety of subject terms are much to numerous to  make this an effective strategy. If we escape the rigid methods of classic collection development by Dewey and item type, other methods of identification will have to be devised to make circulation data sortable in way that is useful  to selectors.

I was amused by one collection use measurement tool the author mentioned- the CFQ (Collection Failure Quotient) - a ratio of a library’s ILL borrowings to holdings. I think my own library is doing ok.

More PDA Needed in Libraries (Patron-Driven Acquisition, that is!)

Laudato, Maricar

Ward, S. M. (2014). Patrons: Your new partners in collection development. American Libraries Magazine.

Summary

Suzanne Ward describes how Patron-Driven Acquisition (PDA) can help increase the circulation statistics of the library. The ways in which PDA increases circulation is through purchases triggered by: Interlibrary Loan (ILL) requests, selection from a vendor’s list, and use after discovery as an eBook. Whenever a library receives an ILL request, the library may just purchase the item since it is in demand from its patrons. In regards to eBooks, after patrons check out a particular title in eBook format a particular number of times, the library orders the book since it is in demand.

Evaluation

Ward’s article is another example that underlines the importance of patron input when it comes to developing your library’s collection. Patron participation in the collection development process is critical to not only help foster healthy circulation statistics, but to create a more meaningful collection for our patrons. While Patron-Driven Acquisition will not completely replace the Librarian’s final say in what gets added to the collection, PDA should definitely play a significant role in the acquisition process.

Reinventing Collection Development for a Digital Age: On-Demand and On-the-Go-video

Paul Zurawski

Clark, M. (2011, September 1). Reinventing Collection Development for a Digital Age: On-Demand and On-the-Go. Retrieved February 22, 2015, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkCYdX6bGi4

Reinventing Collection Development for a Digital Age: On-Demand and On-the-Go

20 minutes long

Source: Youtube.com

Summary:

This video is about the importance of shifting collection development to meets the needs of the current day patron. The speaker discusses why libraries should allocate money towards building electronic resources and databases, as well as how to evaluate if they are effective. The video also stresses the importance of utilizing tools such as interlibrary loan to fulfill short term needs of patrons, such as getting a title that the library would not normally order, or would not see much use otherwise.

Evaluation:

All of this information is money and efficiency saving techniques that everyone looking to start or maintain a collection should know to help best run it. All of it is incredible practical and means making the most of your budget in the most effective means. It’s important to learn to learn how to follow trends regarding patrons and their needs, as well as gathering to tools they can make the most of. Librarians need to think about every tool at their disposal to make all ends meet, such as the points of using ILL for short term borrow vs buying a material that will see little use.