Resource Sharing Today: A Practical Guide to Interlibrary Loan, Consortial Circulation, and Global Cooperation

Citation

Charlotte Clements (2015), "Resource Sharing Today: A Practical Guide to Interlibrary Loan, Consortial Circulation, and Global Cooperation", Library Review, Vol. 64 No. 8/9, pp. 630-631. https://doi.org/10.1108/LR-08-2015-0085

Resource sharing is an umbrella term for a range of cooperative practices between libraries to provide specific resources to their clients. This is described in the introduction to Resource Sharing Today as “getting and sending content […] a transaction that occurs between two libraries” (p. 10). Essentially, the library stands in for a customer in requesting a resource from another institution’s library and also stands in for the lending library in supplying and tracking the resource at their own institution.

Advances in technology and changes to service culture and resourcing have allowed new ways for resource sharing services to be provided. Long-established interlibrary loan practices have been joined by document delivery (which may be defined as providing delivery of a document, such as a copy of a journal article, from an external provider or as the service that delivers resources within the institution) and consortial circulation. Consortial circulation is a service leveraged through a common library management system where borrowers can request material directly from the collection at another institution’s library, avoiding filling in forms and requiring less library intervention to complete the transaction.

As Collette Mak notes in her introduction, interlibrary loan and document delivery services are often seen as unrelated transactions requiring an ability to use the software and apply rules to fulfil the requests. However, as a customer service with global, cooperative partnerships at the core, they have the potential to be a high-value, boutique service as well. Resource Sharing Today provides a comprehensive guide to both the technical requirements and current software and services used for managing an interlibrary lending and document delivery service and insightful discussion abut resource sharing as a means for fulfilling information needs for which library mediation allows access to resources that would otherwise be out of reach.

In Part 1, Building an efficient resource delivery system, Nyquist explores the practical requirements for participating in cooperative resource provision including the role of MARC records, OCLC and postal systems, technological requirements and innovation, and concludes with a discussion on the future of library resource sharing.

In Part 2, Adding personalised, high-quality service, Nyquist examines the service aspects of interlibrary loan. With copyright, collection development and specialised searching forming and informing the service, she deftly puts together the group of knotty issues that confront all libraries offering this service: will cancellation of subscriptions put more pressure on the service? how are licensing agreements dressed? are local holdings records adequately supporting the service?

Nyquist puts the need for library staff and managers to learn best practices at the centre of her enquiry, using original research and literature reviews to examine current debates. Interlibrary lending is not taught in library schools, so graduates learn how to “do the job” on the job; what Nyquist succinctly points out is that an overview of interlibrary lending as a unique global agreement is missing from this learning equation. Her exploration of the potential for the service to become an integral part of the research activity and reflections on current and developing practices makes this publication an important contribution to the library and information literature.