ILL: Sacred Cow or Vital Service?

Interlibrary loan (ILL) is one of those services that librarians and their patrons have embraced for decades. Unfortunately, in a public library setting, this has proven to be an expensive mistake. The public library community directs too many dollars to a service that has too few users. There are better things to do with the money.

The debate on return on investment for ILL should take place at the federal, state, national and state association, and regional system levels. Leaders there need to investigate better avenues to expend revenues that would provide greater benefit to more people. They need to question the depth of their own efforts to explore opportunities via the web to reduce drastically dependence on ILL. They also need to consider why all of the associations to which we as librarians and library organizations pay homage with annual dues are seemingly so invested in retaining the status quo when it comes to this service.

Originally, ILL was designed to help researchers obtain information not available in their university libraries. Librarians recognized that no institution could afford to purchase or house all of the books and periodicals scholars needed to contribute to their fields. The solution, at least in part, was to share collections for the benefit of end users, usually professors.

Public librarians looked at the services offered by their academic colleagues and saw ILL as a way to extend their services as well. Why should research solely be the province of academia? Public libraries, after all, are the "universities of the common man." This reasoning is certainly uplifting, however wrongheaded.

The results have been financially ruinous. While public libraries act as gateways to information, and tax support can be equated with tuition that pays for library staff and basic collections, students have always been expected to invest their own money in purchasing books to support their curriculum choices. According to the director of Collections and Access Programs for the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), Mary E. Jackson (Measuring the Performance of Interlibrary Loan and Document Delivery Services), in 1998 the mean cost of borrowing materials for research libraries was $18.35 and the cost to loan materials was $9.48. Approximately two-thirds of that cost was attributable to labor.

For public libraries, I came up with a figure of $18 as a total cost for ILL by looking at the mean cost for college libraries on Jackson's study and discounting lending costs arbitrarily and ignoring inflation since 1998. I suspect real mean cost is somewhat higher. Even if public library costs were only $12 to borrow and $6 to lend, that would be $18,000 per 1000 items (and this figure is probably far too low today). Can't we use staff to greater advantage elsewhere?

A fairly typical request for "information" is for one or more fiction titles. Usually a patron has discovered a new author and wants to read more of his/her writings than the library owns. How much effort should a library put into filling these requests, especially given that hold shelves contain a high percentage of unclaimed reserve and ILL materials? In many cases ILL has become a convenient cover for failures in funding and collection development.

The federal government, through its Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) program, provides formula-driven grants to the states. These grants emphasize resource sharing. The states in turn use both federal and state monies to fund activities that enhance resource sharing, which often means giving money to regional library systems or cooperatives that were originally service centers for independent public libraries. These library systems facilitate a coordinated ILL effort, including local shared monographic databases, OCLC Interlibrary Loan access, and delivery.

The American Library Association (ALA), through its lobbying power, undeniably supports all of this activity. The Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) is a division of ALA, and the U.S. ILL Code can be found on the RUSA web site. The vast majority of "power" positions in ALA are held by academic librarians, and it is far easier to understand why academics want ILL to thrive.

The amount of money spent on the infrastructure that supports ILL is phenomenal. However, for most public libraries, ILL constitutes under two percent of total volume and is used by an even smaller percentage of registered borrowers. Statistical Report 2002 by the Public Library Data Service indicates that the percentage of ILL use declines in an inverse ratio based on the size of the reporting library (see chart, p. 79).

While this chart may appear to support the notion that ILL is working for small libraries, those libraries are spending a disproportionate amount of their budget on this function. The cost is hidden because two-thirds of ILL expense is labor. If we use the $18 cost per ILL average, a library serving 10,000– 24,499 people is spending nearly $150,000 per year on ILL. When we compare the cost of ILL with that of an average circulation, usually between 75¢ and $1.25, the results are startling.

The public library community needs to develop alternative models to compete with the current one. Models that will serve people more effectively and provide a greater return on investment.

State libraries currently receive approximately 50¢ per capita in LSTA funds. If the current LSTA proposal before Congress is approved, there will be $250 million to support library service and development. Under current patterns, a large share of those monies will be used to support ILL activities. More regional databases will be developed, methods to connect disparate integrated library systems will be funded, and there will be no money left to explore much else. Libraries are facing tough economic times, and financial choices should reward efficiencies, not merely make the status quo less expensive.

If we used federal and state subsidies instead to support a variety of electronic databases, more people would benefit. If a patron could walk into any library in a state and access and print full-content articles from a wide variety of journals, service would be substantially enhanced. There would also be a certain egalitarian cachet.

Or monies could be used to create a universal card so that every resident of a state could use all of the resources available in every library. Many states are burdened with political subdivisions that close neighboring libraries to each other's citizens. This could open doors and build good neighbors.

ILL money would be well spent developing legislation that allows libraries to ask citizens for tax levies in every state, or educate school boards, library administrations, and staff on how to mount successful campaigns.

Countless lives would be affected if the salaries of rural librarians and those who work in inner cities were subsidized. Federal and state monies could also create a dollar pool for local library acquisitions. Why not buy more of the books and magazines users demand? Usually the biggest deterrent is lack of money.

Obviously, one can argue for a different distribution of funds than currently exists. However, we must be able to respond to an individual who wants material not owned by the library. After all, for at least the last two generations we've told the public that if we don't have what they want, we will get it for them.

An extreme alternative to ILL would be to use a tactic similar to the federal government's antidrug campaign and "just say no." I suspect this would enjoy as little success; unhappy patrons would certainly complain.

Another option is to judge each request on a title-by-title basis and draw the line at books that are not intended for research. A strict interpretation of the ILL Code would exclude most fiction requests. However, I doubt if most librarians, despite the rare opportunity to discuss the meaning of professionalism, would be willing to court the arguments that would ensue.

A fee for service could help. In many respects, ILL is an elitist service. Charging for certain services, such as room bookings, selected programming, and printing, is neither unique nor untoward. Thus, identifying ILL as a special service instead of a core service and charging a fee for it may prove palatable to consumers.

My favorite solution is to buy the requested items upon demand for the patrons to use [see "Purchase on Demand: A Better Customer Service Model ," p. 77, for more on this process]. Today, there are more and more ways to get patrons what they want in a timely, efficient manner.

The more I look at ILL, the more I question the profession's investment in making it less expensive, faster, and more efficient. Money spent on this service is finite and could be used elsewhere at a greater benefit to more people.

The debate on the value of what has traditionally been regarded as a core service could be driven by questions about elitism vs. egalitarianism, the differing roles of academic libraries and public libraries, the value of multitype library cooperation, who controls ALA, and how many people are willing to expend time and energy to create change.

We need loud and raucous debate that questions how money is spent, and then we can identify the winners and losers in the battle of the bucks. I hope a chorus of my peers will insist that we challenge the predominant ethos, but I doubt it will happen. More likely, a collection of state librarians will petition this writer to investigate retirement outside U.S. boundaries.

Abbie Hoffman gave the best reason for attacking sacred cows: they "make the tastiest hamburgers," he said. We need people who will write to this journal to laud or lambaste me and then work for change.

I'll take my burger with ketchup, mustard, and onions, hold the pickle.