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ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 54| December 2001


Effective and Efficient:
Results of the Benchmarking Study of Interlibrary Loans and Document Supply

Largest study ever
The most comprehensive examination of interlibrary loan and document delivery (ILL/DD) operations ever undertaken in Australia is now complete. 25 000 pages of data from 97 libraries across Australia have been analysed to discover what makes ILL/DD operations effective in delivering services to users and how to make these operations efficient.

The full report of the study is available at: http://www.nla.gov.au/initiatives/nrswg/benchmarking.html

The study
The National Resource Sharing Working Group conducted the study with the assistance of the National Library of Australia. The study instrument was based on that used in the very successful Association of Research Libraries study, Measuring the Performance of Interlibrary Loan Operations, undertaken in the United States of America with North American research libraries.

The aims of the study were to:

The survey findings were analysed by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, and corroborated by a detailed analysis of the high performing requesting and supplying ILL/DD operations.

The results
The main measures used to assess and compare performance were:

This article explores what the most effective and efficient requesters are doing. The full report covers supplying activities as well. The graph shows the results for requesting activities.

Turnaround time for requesting

The library at the 10th percentile was able to get an item to the patron within seven calendar days of the patron requesting it, on average. The 90th percentile library took almost three times longer at 19 days. The average library took 10 days.

The fastest libraries:

Fill rate for requesting
Fill rate for requesting operations informs us of the success in finding an item. The best libraries fill 99 per cent of all requests, the 10th percentile library can only fill 77 per cent.

The best rates were achieved by libraries that:

Costs as a requester
A wide array of costs was used to calculate the cost of requesting one item. The average cost was AUD$32.10, but it cost the 10th percentile library only $11.72 to obtain an item and $63.96 for the 90th percentile library.

Two costs contribute 85 per cent of the total: staff and fees. To reduce staff costs, each staff member must process more. Those libraries with low staff costs and other high performance factors used efficient systems and processes.

Being part of a cooperative agreement can reduce fees. Although there is also no income for items supplied, there are flow-on cost benefits such as not having to raise or acquit invoices, not having to track payments, and not having to monitor budgets.

Also, equipment, network and delivery costs make up only 10 per cent of costs. Automation, although often expensive at the time of purchase of equipment or software, is not a major contributor to cost in the long term. Investing in technology to make your staff more efficient can reduce costs.

What next?
The Working Group is developing a series of initiatives based on the outcomes of the study, including:

Training courses for ILL/DD practitioners, focusing on improved work practices, use of tools, and how to obtain knowledge of collections.

—Tom Ruthven

Study results for requesting activities
| Contents list for this issue of Gateways |

Please address any comments and enquiries to The Editor, Gateways: dthomas@nla.gov.au

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