Primary Research Group has published Higher Education Interlibrary Loan Management Benchmarks, 2014 Edition, ISBN 978-1-57440-268-1.

The 136-page study presents detailed data on the interlibrary loan operations of approximately 50 colleges and universities with data broken out for different types of higher education institutions and by other variables, such as for public and private institutions, and by college enrollment level. The report gives detailed data on turnaround times for various kinds of interlibrary loan borrowing and lending requests, use of technology and services, impact of distance learning and MOOCs on interlibrary loan, copyright and open access issues, the administrative jurisdiction of the interlibrary loan department, departmental cost structure, personnel benchmarks, trends in departmental budgets and other issues in interlibrary loan management.

Just a few of the report's many findings are that:

• The mean turnaround time for book lending requests among our survey participants was 2.13 days
• The libraries in the sample spent a mean of $9,333 last year (or the last year for which there are records) on shipping and courier fees related to interlibrary loan
• Survey participants estimate that a mean of 26.98 percent of the library's journals contracted for electronic access prohibit all use in interlibrary loan
• 41.3 percent of survey participants use fax delivery as a means of document delivery for interlibrary loan
• Public colleges in the sample are nearly twice as likely as private colleges to charge a fee for interlibrary loan, with 10.34 percent of the former and just 5.88 percent of the latter doing so
• 46.67 percent of participants with enrollments of 2,500 or less say interlibrary loan is under the jurisdiction of the Reference department
• 30 percent of the research libraries in the sample use Ariel

Print and PDF versions are $95.00; site licenses are also available. To download a table of contents, participants lists, and a free excerpt, or to place an order, visit our website at www.PrimaryResearch.com or call us at (212) 736-2316.