The interlibrary loan (ILL) service of the Scarborough Library experienced a significant increase in the amount of requests for articles, books, and multimedia, processing about 4,900 requests last year.
The number of ILL requests has increased each year, said Joshua DiSalvo, who has worked with ILL service since 2009 and has been the ILL coordinator since 2011. “Last year in particular, the 2012–2013 academic year, we processed almost 800 more requests than the 2011–2012 academic year.
A significant part of this increase is due to the greater number of journal articles that are requested by students. As more periodicals and scholarly journals move toward digital formats, many students request that articles be sent as a PDFs via email.
“I think the internet, for better or worse, probably lends itself to more efficient research,” said DiSalvo, “and that speed and ease of use may lead to more requests coming in than when research was done primarily from books and journals in print.”
Students and faculty members can request journal articles, books, and multimedia items through the ILL service. According to the ILL website, books and multimedia items take an average of 7–14 days to arrive.
There is a wider range in the time it takes for patrons to receive electronically processed journal articles. The average wait time is a week, but this depends primarily on the speed in which the lending library processes requests.
“It’s not fast enough for me to make use of it regularly,” said Robert Dugan, MAT student, of the ILL service.
Kristen Dick, an English major, said she has requested both books and journal articles through the ILL service. “I had to wait two or three weeks for the book I requested to come in, but the system for requesting articles is a lot faster and easy to use.”
“Sometimes articles will be delivered within a few hours of being requested, other times it can take a couple weeks,” said DiSalvo. “Once I submit a request, it’s up to a lending library to determine if they can fill it, and every library moves at their own pace.”
Before last academic year, physical books were the most often requested items, but journal articles moved up to the number one spot this past year.
In addition to borrowing items, Scarborough Library also lends items to other libraries. Most of these requests are for books and DVDs, according to DiSalvo.
The ILL service is available for faculty and staff as well as students. While students more often request journal articles, the staff members are responsible for the majority of book and multimedia requests.
Current students, faculty and staff have accesses to the ILL service year round, and alumni and community patrons can gain access by becoming a member of the Scarborough Society. The Scarborough Society “is a membership organization whose purpose is to raise funds to support and enhance our library. They do a lot of good,” said DiSalvo.
Students and faculty can request ILL items through links on the library’s website at www.shepherd.edu/libweb/.
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