Addendum
Illinois Interlibrary Loan Assessment Project
Phase II (1999/2000)
2/26/02
to the Final Report Submitted to the CCMCC By Tina E. Chrzastowski and Lynn Wiley 4/01

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library
Urbana, Illinois


The Assessment project report completed in March 2001, provided the Illinois Cooperative Collection Management Program with an analysis of interlibrary loan data from 26 institutions in Illinois. This addendum completes that report with a summary of the analysis of the full text impact as evidenced by the data.
This addendum should be attached to the final report (sent to ICCMP April 2001 and again in February 2002). The report included two lists of titles that were frequently-requested by the 26 libraries:

  • The first includes 52 titles and were those supplied by libraries outside the state in both the 1995 and the 1999 studies. These titles are potential candidates for purchase by libraries within Illinois

  • The second list includes the 246 titles that were those frequently-requested titles by the 26, filled within the state and appeared in both studies. These titles are candidates for full text access as they are clearly needed by researchers in Illinois academic institutions and are presently requiring labor intensive ILL processes. The data suggest these titles be considered for consortia purchase

    Full text impact

    One purpose of the study was to correlate any changes in ILL use with the greater availability of electronic full text titles. The data indicate that ILL use has increased 9% since the 1995/96 study. Full text availability, now found in many Illinois libraries, is not decreasing the need for more resource sharing. Many full text titles are simply supplementing resources already available by providing print material in another format. The fact that these materials are easier to access and generally more available at the academic campuses may help to explain the decrease in use of multi-type libraries from 1995/96 to 1999/00 (see report).

    Potential full text availability

    The 246 titles requested by the 26 and filled by instate libraries may be candidates for full text access. In order to address the hypothesis that more full text access to these frequently-requested titles may offer the best way to share resources, the authors had to determine how available these titles may be in that format. A first step was to determine how recent the articles requested were, many full text resources only cover a few years of back files. Consequently, the data for the most frequently-requested titles (those requested 20 or more times) were sorted by citation date.


    Figure Addendum 1. Transactions by Citation Date for Articles From Core Titles Received by the 26 in 1999/00


    The data shown in Figure Addendum 1 confirm that the majority of transactions for the most highly requested titles were from the more current years (1998 and 1999), dates more likely to be available in full text format. Note that the study included requests made only in the first half of 2000 and so few articles were from the year 2000.
    An analysis of the titlesfrequently-requested in both studies and supplied by in-state libraries was done to determine full text availability by publisher. The overlap for the studies covered 246 titles, of which 215 are available in full text electronic form. This 87% availability of overlapping, frequently-requested titles in full-text far exceeds the prediction of 50% made by the authors, and represents a figure which is expected to grow exponentially during the next few years. However, obtaining each title electronically is not straightforward, especially in a statewide environment. Many titles are only available bundled with a group of journal titles. Figure Addendum 2 provides information on publishers with titles in this top group of requested materials. Publishers of two or more of the titles in the overlap analysis are provided, covering 171 titles. The remaining 44 titles are from 44 different publishers and would require individual subscriptions or may be offered through a full text vendor such as OCLC or Ebsco.

    PublisherTitles in List
    Academic5
    American Psyciatric Press4
    American Psychological Association8
    Blackwell4
    Cambridge4
    Carfax3
    Elsevier21
    Guilford5
    Halworth13
    J Wiley7
    Kluwer17
    Lawrence Earlbaum Assoc.9
    Lipponcott6
    M Dekker2
    Macmillian2
    Munswaard2
    Oxford5
    Pergamon16
    Psychology Press3
    Sage14
    Springer Verlag6
    Swets & Zeitlinger BV2
    Taylor & Francis3
    W B Saunders5
    Williams & Wilkins5
    FigureAddendum 2. Publishers of the High Use Titles available in Full Text


    Conclusions

    All of the titles supplied by the in-state libraries were the subject of over 20,000 requests from Illinois researchers. Based on the ARL cost study [1] that determined the average cost of ILL transactions to be estimated at $30.00 per article, these transactions represent approximately $600,000 in annual indirect expenditures from Illinois library ILL budgets. This investment of both staff time and photocopies strongly suggests that more cost-effective access is required. Consortia groups such as OhioLink have purchased full text journals to meet their collective user demands [2].
    The 246 titles identified here represent a core group of material. It is recommended that Illinois libraries look at the possibility of purchasing full text access to these titles to best serve the needs of researchers in Illinois and to avoid the indirect ILL costs absorbed by all the Illinois libraries supplying copies across the state.

    Notes

    1.     Jackson, Mary L., "Measuring the performance of interlibrary loan and document delivery services, 195 pages, 1997. Available online at http://www.arl.org/newsltr/acc.html

    2.     Diedrichs, Carol Pitts, :E-journals: the OhioLINK experience, ”Library Collections, Acquisitions, and Technical Services 25 (2001) 191-210