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The IFLA Office for UPA and International Lending has recently established some guidelines for libraries sending ILL requests by email. The guidelines aim to support document delivery staff who send ILL requests by ordinary free from email messages, where the request details are given in the body of the message. The Guidelines are offered as support for existing national or regional practices, and aim to ensure that requests contain all of the required elements, set out in a standardised format which will help to speed up the processing of such requests.

A sample of 61,333 serial requests, received at the BLLD during a three month period in 1975 was examined. Details of language, date of publication, subject, type of requesting organisation and, where possible, shelf mark for each request were recorded, and analysed by computer. A number of print — outs of titles, many of them in rank order of use, were produced; a list of the 51 most requested (post — 1969 only) titles is included in an Appendix. Half the demand was for 1,300 titles, and 5% of titles held by the BLLD were responsible for 80% of all requests. Most of the requests — 83% of the total — were for serials in the field of science and technology, and there was a strong bias towards British and North American publications. The overall satisfaction rate for serials from BLLD stock was 91%.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the efforts, methods and results of the automation of end‐user loan requests in the Danish union catalogue “bibliotek.dk” (library.dk).

The paper explains the implementation of automation of end‐user requests and explains why it is necessary.

The implications for the user interface are explained, as well as the technical solution and the consequences for the participating libraries and for the end‐users.

The paper will be of interest to all librarians who are supplying end‐users with library material through union catalogues or portals.

The requirements for transmission methods are accuracy, speed, ease of use, ability to switch requests, ability to respond to requests, and cost. Postal services are still most commonly used. Telephone and Telex are faster, but can be expensive. New alternatives include automatic document request services, direct requesting by computer, automated request switching systems, and telefacsimile. These new methods will become more popular as costs of equipment decrease.

Interlibrary loan and document delivery have become an area of great change in today’s library. New ILL requests now go to the online queue immediately for processing. Once authenticated, a user can input as many requests as they want at that time. Work has begun on a project called DRSS ± Distributed Resource Sharing System, which is being co‐developed by the CIC libraries and OCLC. Michigan State and University of Michigan are also beginning a project to test a new desktop document delivery system called Prospero.

Requests received by the West Midland Regional Library Bureau (WMRLB) during a four week period early in 1976 were monitored within the Region and copies of all the requests were submitted to the British Library Lending Division. An analysis of the type of material requested is given. The response of the West Midland Regional Library System (WMRLS) to the requests was tested by a questionnaire to member libraries. The response of the BLLD to the ‘hypothetical’ requests was monitored by the BLLD Research section. The two systems are compared in terms of levels of satisfaction, speed of supply, cost and price to participating libraries. It appears that the overall satisfaction rate from the two systems is similar, that the BLLD provides a quicker alternative for items it has available in stock, and that the costs of the present system might be reduced if all requests were sent direct to the BLLD. Possible mixed systems are also mentioned.

End‐user requesting in New Zealand remains a relatively new phenomenon. The National Library of New Zealand has conducted two separate pilot projects with different institutions. This paper aims to consider the differences between the two projects and looks at the trends that emerged.

The pilot projects occurred over similar timeframes, 12 months apart. Each used a different interface from which end‐users submitted their requests. The projects aimed to test workflow processes and ascertain the impacts for end‐users and library staff. System impacts and maintenance requirements, how the results would feed into best practice guidelines, and recommend future developments were also considered.

This paper details the different user responses elicited during the evaluation processes. A large proportion of end‐users in both projects confirmed that they would use this method of request creation again. The results confirm that end‐user requesting does work in a utility environment.

Both projects continue in production with differing levels of involvement. The Lincoln University project continues following a redevelopment of the request screens based on what end‐users identified as important to them. The Landcare Research project continues with a more low key approach as the National Library of New Zealand considers the future developments required to enhance the end‐user experience and product up‐take in New Zealand.

This paper is of value to interloan librarians and especially those in an academic environment. It provides a compact case study where a national electronic utility provides the main platform for interlending and document supply in one country.

Recent studies show that many Web users only submit short queries and conduct short search sessions. This paper examines aspects of users’ attempting longer more complex queries. Web search services such as Ask Jeeves – publicly accessible question and answer (Q&A) search engines – encourage queries in question or request format. In light of this trend, this study examines whether general Web queries are shifting towards a more question/request format. Previous studies show that some users were submitting question or request format queries to general non‐Q&A Web search engines. This paper re‐examines this issue by analysing large‐scale Web query data from two different (US and European) Web query data sets, including 1.2 million Excite queries (www.excite.com) and 1.2 million AlltheWeb.com (http://AlltheWeb.com) queries from 2001.

An investigation of the effects of submitting inter‐library loan requests after only a minimal check on their bibliographic details was first proposed in the UK by the British Library Lending Division because both requesting libraries and the Lending Division were finding it increasingly hard to spend much time and effort on the checking of requests. It was thought that a practical recognition of this fact on both sides might reduce work without a significant effect on the service. A higher proportion of requests might have to be returned by the Lending Division, but the speed of response to the majority might actually be improved. To test this, three experiments were conducted in co‐operation with selected borrowers. The first of these studies, carried out in the Summer of 1979 with Durham University Library, was reported in the April 1980 issue of Interlending Review. The results were encouraging, and two further studies were carried out in 1980, one with Manchester Polytechnic Library and the other with Nottinghamshire Public Library. Full reports on these surveys have been compiled. This note brings together the results of this work and presents the general conclusions.

A sample of 66,430 serial requests received at the Lending Division over a two‐week period in May 1980 was examined, and details of satisfaction, subject, date of publication, type of requesting organization, method of transmission to the Lending Division and where possible the Division's serial shelf mark, were recorded from each request form. The type of issue and the country of origin of each request were also recorded. Results show that a quite limited core collection of serials can satisfy a high proportion of demand. Only 10% of titles requested were necessary to satisfy 50% of demand. However, concentration of demand on titles had dropped since 1975 when a similar survey took place. Analysis by subject reveals that the concentration is higher for science than social sciences, and higher for social sciences than for the humanities. Therefore, a smaller proportion of titles requested in science is required to satisfy demand than in the social sciences or humanities. Lists of titles in rank order of use have been produced from both the 1980 and 1975 surveys. The amount of overlap between the top titles on each list is not great, and decreases as the number of titles increases. Of the top 5,000 titles on each list, only 2,591 (52%) are common to both lists. This inconsistency of rank lists over time sheds doubt on the continuing value of core lists of serials, which might decrease substantially in validity over a relatively short period.