Academic libraries are expected to support the information needs of students, faculty and staff in a myriad of disciplines - yet it is difficult for one library to satisfy such demands through self sufficiency. With the information explosion during the later half of this century there has been a tremendous growth in the volume of materials needed and/or wanted by staff and students. Unfortunately, libraries do not have the purchasing resources to keep up with demand. In their need and responsibility to reach beyond the resources contained in their own collections to satisfy the needs of its clientele, libraries now must be able to draw upon the materials and information contained in other libraries and agencies. The "recent" slew of budgetary problems experienced by libraries, tied with the evolution of information needs, has upset the balance between ownership and access and resource sharing among libraries. Let me use UT Arlington as an example (I am sure that at least parts of this scenario will sound familiar to each and everyone of you):
Nevertheless, the code does address the issue of fairness. I quote, "Libraries should be willing to share their resources liberally so that a relatively few libraries are not over burdened. Libraries must be willing to lend if they wish to borrow." It is difficult to avoid net lending entirely because of the historical depth or unique nature of some libraries' collections. An institution's current level of acquisition will also play a factor in their lending status.
The general recognition of the mutual benefit to be obtained by access to the collections of other libraries provides the basis for reciprocity among libraries in sharing their resources. The mutual benefit to be gained has led to accommodation of ILL among libraries as a routine matter. The appropriateness and necessity of resource sharing is not an issue here, but the issue of proportionate benefit is.
ILL is the service of sharing assets between libraries, and it is the issue of load leveling that tries to address imbalances. Looking in the dictionary, a load is the amount of work that a person carries or is expected to carry. Leveling is the attempt to equalize or distribute something evenly. So for our purpose load leveling is a means for developing or providing equity in resource sharing. This means monitoring borrowing patterns so lending libraries are not overburdened and all libraries have the opportunity to participate as lenders as fully as possible so that what a library gives to the group, it receives from the group in return.
The issue of load leveling arises out of concern for fairness. Most of us in this room would probably agree that in a resource sharing environment, lending should not outweigh borrowing activity to the extent that it proves to be a detriment to the lending library's budget or clientele. In a consortial setting, the issue is not so much equality in numbers between individual libraries, but that the value to each of its participants provides satisfactory results. Quality results should be the final goal in addition to the balancing of numbers. To achieve these results awareness is key. Any strategy for load leveling in a consortium should incorporate information about net lenders and net borrowers.
As an aside, I had assumed that load leveling was a reasonably recent issue since it has been talked about so much in the last two years. So I was surprised when Nancy Paine sent me a 1977 article that discussed this very issue among the NELINET libraries in the New England area. At that time they did a study to provide borrowing libraries with information to help them select recipients of their ILL requests. Their aim was to prevent lending libraries from being overburdened with requests. The researchers involved were working on the assumption that large research libraries receive a disproportionate percentage of ILL requests in comparison to what they borrow. The NELINET study assigned a "market value" to each institution based upon ownership, fees, turnaround time and a load leveling incentive factor. The formulas they used to arrive at market value were complex and indicated to me the seriousness with which they approached the issue of reciprocity among themselves. I'm just thankful that we have OCLC reports to go by today instead!
Now that I have given you some background, I think it would help to discuss the borrowing process since it is ultimately the borrowers who "tax" the system. When ordering the first criteria when choosing possible lenders is ownership...in other words you cannot (or should not) go to a library that does not own the item you need. This explains the tendency when searching for information not contained in your immediate library to turn to a larger library for the desired item because of their broader collection. When this approach is taken, the effect is to increase the burden upon larger libraries. In actuality, examination of modern databases reveals that there is a higher degree of nonduplication of holdings among libraries than was previously thought. With such information and technology available, it is possible to distribute many requests to smaller libraries. The burden on larger libraries can, to some extent, then be controlled. Also, since health science and legal materials are often needed and few libraries other than those that specialize in these areas own them, medical and law libraries are likely to be net lenders.
Once a borrower identifies ownership of a periodical title, the union list is searched. Yet sending requests only to union-listed libraries can impede load leveling efforts by distributing requests inequitably to those on the list. Also when selecting possible lenders, ILL staff often choose libraries they know will provide fast, accurate service and this too may result in inequity of requests upon those institutions with good reputations.
During the ordering process, the borrower expends little more than staff time (an average of 3-6 minutes a request) and transmission costs in its query to acquire something. Lender expenses cover staff time, copy costs, postage or transmission costs, packaging and, in the case of loans, unavailability of the item while it is out.
Because of these factors - verifiable holdings and quality service - that influence lending string selection, some networks have come up with protocols for ordering materials through interlibrary loan. The general intent of protocols is to filter ILL requests through a strategic system of distribution in order that the workload can be equitably shared. Suggestions gathered from TexShare, AmiNet, the Greater Midwest Research Library Consortium, and the Network of Alabama Academic Libraries include:
Establishing ordering protocols is not the only way to balance loads, so I want to take a step back now and look at other ways this problem has been approached.
I believe that the creation of group access capability by OCLC in the last few years is having an impact on loads. A GAC is a group database that can be used for ILL processing by libraries that do not catalog on OCLC as well as those who do. Examples in our state include the Texas Group and AmiNet. Group Access Capability has provided online availability to resources in select member libraries that had not been available to us in the past. A fact to demonstrate the potential of GACS is that as of 1993, Arizona alone had added one million holding records for its selective member libraries. GAC selective users are encouraged to tapeload whatever machine readable cataloging they have available for holdings information. To quote the AmiNet document, "One purpose of a network is to provide an environment in which the libraries can provide each individual within their area with equal opportunity of access to resources that will satisfy their needs and interests".
The Texas Group, a GAC formed by the Texas State Library, assisted public libraries with one-time startup costs for non-OCLC users with over 50,000 volumes or which made at least ILL 500 requests in the previous year. In 1995 the State Library began paying tape loading fees as funds were available to add these holdings to the OCLC database. And in 1996, dependent upon funds, the State Library hoped to pay to tapeload records of smaller libraries with particularly useful collections. Encouraging special libraries to join the GACS and load their holdings, might help to alleviate some of the load on medical and legal libraries.
Another strategy to help with load leveling has been OCLC's automatic lending string feature which "scrambled" a string of identified lenders so potential suppliers were more randomly selected. This has helped override the human tendency to select sites alphabetically and to select only familiar symbols.
Some institutions charge a lending fee as a means of load leveling. From the boorower's perspective this practice tends to favor those institutions that are financially well off and shuts those out that have very limite resources. Many see fees as a detriment to a cooperative system; however, for some lenders it may be necessary to sustain their lending service.
Lenders have also done a form of internal load leveling for years, usually as the result of staff shortages and not as a normal daily means of controlling workload. The good thing about this approach is that it puts control over how many requests they handle - and how well - in the hands of the lender. For this sort of load leveling, requests are usually prioritized based on consortial agreements, your place on the lender string, charges, and if you are one of few potential suppliers.
While it does not actually level the work load, a consortium can also approach the problem of uneven workloads by issuing "reimbursements" to net lenders to help cover some of their costs.
In everything I read, knowledge seems to be key to the promotion of reciprocity. An analysis of an institution's size and loans and borrows can reveal information about the importance they place on their lending operations. Libraries with sizable collections that are net borrowers and libraries that are significantly smaller net lenders than their peers need to evaluate the quality of their lending service. Low lending levels may also be due to poor availability of holdings information.
As stated in the TexShare documentation, every TexShare library has the responsibility to support its lending operations with at least equal priority as its borrowing service. This is why the TexShare ILL Protocol Working Group agreed that paying attention to ILL statistics and informing TexShare ILL staff which libraries were the largest net lenders would permit adjustments in borrowing patterns and help level the load for everyone. Their hope is that intelligent load leveling will mean that no TexShare library will have to charge another. Only time and an honest effort to use the information gathered will tell if this hope will become reality.
To gather the needed information, TexShare receives 12 monthly reports from OCLC and each report is approximately 150 pages long. Each category of report includes year-to-date and current month information. The reports cover net total, net copies and loans, total supplied/received, and total copies and loans supplied/received. The data also shows net borrowing/lending (loans supplied minus borrows received) and the actual amount of borrowing and lending between each pair of libraries.
The first TexShare analysis listed these institutions as top lenders: UH, UT Southwestern Medical Center, East Texas State, Southwest Texas State, Stephen F. Austin, UNT, Texas A&M, and UNT Health Science Center. The documentation that provided this information included the following plea: "The rest of us lenders want to pitch in and give these hard working ILL departments a respite. Borrowers need to give other lenders the opportunity to shine by selecting different lending partners whenever possible. If you are using custom holdings on OCLC you might find it advantageous to move the libraries noted to second or third priority."
Participants were then encouraged to request from those that were felt to be underutilized: UT Austin, Texas Tech, Sam Houston State, Texas Woman's, UH Clear Lake and UT El Paso. In response to this information UT Austin changed their status from a "list my symbol twice" category to encourage usage and to compensate for the fact that their serial holdings are not available on the union list.
Custom holdings is the easiest way to manage this information because it allows borrowers to group institutional symbols in the priority they wish to order from. Let me use UTA's custom holdings set up as an example:
This tiered holdings structuremay appear complex, however once established, it uncomplicates the task of creating your lender string considerably. In the process of writing the report, I have considered the possibility of creating a 3rd TexShare tier so that underutilized TexShare libraries are given greater priority in the hierarchy.
There is no doubt that OCLC's custom holdings module can do much for us in terms of load balancing by helping orderers prioritize their lender strings. This fact was proven when the Docline service came online in 1988 with a feature similar to custom holdings. They found that ILL reciprocity between medical libraries was changed for the better.
Now the question has arisen -- what priorities should be followed when a load leveling question crosses between existing consortia and members of TexShare? This is a question that will have to be addressed by each consortium. Phoenix Group directors were asked this question, and their response was that the Phoenix libraries should continue to borrow from each other as they have always done, taking priority over the TexShare arrangements. I expect that this is the approach most libraries would take with their primary consortial group.
In the ideal cooperative situation, every library would lend the same number of items to the whole consortium as it receives from the whole consortium. This does not mean every library will have the same number of borrows/loans as every other library. Nor does it mean that lending will be equal between any pair of libraries within the group. It means that what a library gives to the group, it receives from the group in return. It is TexShare's goal to keep the actual number of every library's net loans and borrows as equivalent as possible.
There is no doubt that consortial arrangements can improve ILL activity and responsiveness. However, in this concern of looking at numbers, the concept of best lending partners should not be lost. Seeking the best choices for lending and borrowing partners recognizes that access to materials is key to the relationship.
What makes an ideal resource sharing partner? Generous lending policies, timely responses to queries, quick OCLC updating, verification of requests before ordering, the timely return of borrowed materials, attention to detail so things are done right the first time so follow up is rarely necessary, and options for delivery. My point is that the focus should not just be on reducing direct costs and balancing loads, but also on increasing/improving service to our customers. And this is why it is important for the lender's role in the ILL process to not be minimized.
In the long run, it will be up to each net lender to decide where to draw the line between being a good partner in the consortium and the potential negative effect this status may have on its own budget and library users.
Ponnappa, Bidanda, Linda Phillips and Annelle Huggins, "Using Interlibrary Loan Statistics to Promote Reciprocity," JOURNAL OF INTERLIBRARY LOAN, DOCUMENT DELIVERY AND INFORMATION SUPPLY, 6, 2, 1995, 75-82.
Wolper, James and Libby Truddell, "A Model of the NELINET Computerized Interlibrary Loan System: Testing Strategies for Load-Leveling," JOURNAL OF LIBRARY AUTOMATION, 11/12, June 1978, 142-151.
Thanks to John Harer from Texas A&M University for
allowing me to draw from his yet to published article on the same
topic.