ILL and Summit Borrowing Report to Summit Borrowing Committee, June 2005

SBC will vote on the recommendation in June. If the recommendation is adopted, it will be forwarded to Orbis Cascade Alliance Council.

Converting ILL request to Summit Borrowing

The SBC Steering Team discussed the issue of “Summit Borrowing vs. ILL” at the meeting on June 3, 2005. The team reviewed the results of the recent survey and individual comments that had been received, and recommends the following policy for SBC consideration.

Policy Recommendation

Orbis Cascade Alliance members will use Summit Borrowing whenever possible: when the patron is eligible to request through Summit, and the item can be requested through Summit. Borrowing sites will check all ILL requests going to other Alliance members before sending. Owning Sites will fill ILL requests whenever possible.

Explanation

Summit Borrowing is the preferred means for sharing materials, whenever possible. Summit Borrowing (SB) benefits both the library and the patron:

• SB finds an available copy right away, and patrons are likely to receive the item more quickly.
• SB is less costly than InterLibrary Loan (ILL) for both the borrowing and loaning sites: packaging, shipping, and staff processing time are reduced.

There are, however, legitimate reasons to use ILL between Alliance members from time to time. For example:

• patron is not eligible to request through Summit Borrowing, and the library would like to provide ILL service for the patron
• the item is not requestable through SB, but may be loaned via ILL (e.g. special formats)

Borrowing sites should not use ILL instead of SB to provide special or preferential service or different loan periods.

Requesting, or Borrowing site

Borrowing sites will check all ILL requests going to other Alliance members before sending. Members may use whatever manual or automated methods seem best suited. For example, a member may search the local catalog and Summit before sending ILL requests to other Alliance members. Using OCLC custom holdings, a member may set up a specific group for books, etc. (“returnables”) that excludes Alliance members, or sends requests for Alliance libraries to a review file for checking in Summit.

Owning Site

Because the Borrowing, or Requesting site will always check ILL requests before sending, the Owning site need not check requests, and should fill requests from other Alliance members whenever possible.

Informal discussion Aug. 2004

Survey Spring 2005: preview copy; results

updated: June 17, 2005