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Consortia and collections: enhancing interlending
effectiveness
Margaret Jones and
Dr Paul Genoni
Abstract | Paper in
Portable Document Format (PDF) Presentation in Microsoft® PowerPoint®
format
At the heart of an effective
interlending system is the aggregation of the collections on which it depends.
However, discussions of inter-library lending rarely focus on the central role
of collections, emphasising instead the technical infrastructure necessary -
the availability of bibliographic and holdings data, agreed charges and payment
methods, requesting and supplying mechanisms etc.
The current interlending
environment consists of three distinctive forms of supply. These
are:
- The centralised system exemplified
by the British Library Document Supply Centre, which is replicated in many
other countries,
- Commercial document suppliers,
e.g. publishers providing documents on demand,
- Individual libraries and library
consortia.
The National Library of
Australia's recent inter library lending benchmarking study suggests that for
many libraries, the third of these options, membership of an interlending
consortium, will deliver greater efficiency and lower costs. Many libraries are
therefore choosing consortium membership as a means of achieving efficiencies
in their interlending operations. These efficiencies can be maximised by
increasing the volume of requests supplied from within the consortium. This
paper therefore argues that interlending consortia need to incorporate a focus
on collaborative collecting activities.
The paper considers several
existing consortia in order to investigate how a modern cooperative collecting
function can be developed and incorporated within their activities.
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