College and Research Libraries DAVID KASER Whither Interlibrary Loan? Interlibrary loan traffic in academic libraries has doubled in the past five years, with an ever-growing percent of the lending being done by the nation's few largest libraries. Concurrently labor costs have risen substantially so that some large libraries now claim that they are putting $50,000 to $100,000 per year more into interlibrary lending than they are getting out through borrowing. This growing inequity is forcing discussion of programs-local, regional, and national-for charging fees for interlibrary loan service. This paper raises some of the considerations that should figure into any such discussions. THE CENTURIES-OLD PRACTICE of one li- bnuy lending · its books to another is based upon the premise that although books may physically be the chattel of the institution that bought and paid for them, they belong intellectually to the general cultural heritage of mankind and ought somehow to be made avail- able to all men. Interlibrary loan has satisfied this latter characteristic of books while in the former sense the lending library's equity in its books was presumably protected by the reciprocal nature of the practice itself. After all, as many books were borrowed as were lent. Reciprocity, however, functions ef- fectively as a balancing factor only in the broad middle range of libraries that borrow and lend at roughly the same rates. At one end of the scale there are many small libraries that can be only borrowers, while at the opposite end there are a number of libraries, perhaps a hundred, that lend very many more books than they borrow.1 Thus the re- sources of the latter institutions go to subsidize the system for the benefit of the former. David Kaser is director of libraries, Cor- nell University, Ithaca, New York. 398/ Until relatively recently this imbal- ance caused limited concern among large libraries, because it required of them only a modest supernumerary ex- penditure above their own operating costs. Their major investment was in the books themselves, and if the normal use expectancy of a book was fifty . read- ings, an occasional interlibrary use of that volume represented a loss to the holding institution of only one-fiftieth of its cost. Labor was cheap, so the staff time required for the internal handling of interlibrary loans was rationalized as a small contribution to the general good. Libraries, however, have recently be- come very substantially labor intensive enterprises. By far the largest portion of a libraris expenditure today goes in- to direct payroll; expenditures for the books themselves represent only half as much investment in terms of operating costs as do labor costs. The reversal of .this ratio is now forcing recognition and appraisal of the impact of the practice of interlibrary loan on the large primarily lending libraries. Concurrent with this relocation of li- brary costs from books to labor came another phenomenon that aggravated the long quiescent problem of the large library's expenditures on interlibrary lending. This was society's inability any longer to fulfill all of its advanced study and research needs, in that rela- tively few university centers which were already prepared to furnish out of their own resources the requisite library ma- terials. Suddenly research and advanced study with very large library require- ments were going on seemingly every- where, whether the necessary book re- sources were available there or not. Traffic in interlibrary loan requests against the few large libraries virtually skyrocketed,2 while their own needs to borrow from the system rose less rapid- ly when indeed they rose at all. The his- toric inequity thus became greater even than it had been before, although recog- nition of its debilitating effect upon the lending libraries remained slow in com- ing.3 Reasons for the slowness of the li- brary community to recognize this change have doubtless been varied. One reason is that, just as doctors will let no one die despite his inability to pay, so librarians feel constrained to let no one's need for a book go unmet. Secondly, some large publicly supported institu- tions have assumed their ·extra-campus landings to be a mandated . service ac- companying their tax support, although this argument becomes uncomfortably vague , when loans are made outside of the geographical area constituting the tax base. Interlibrary loan furthermore is one service for which librarians have received only praise from the lay public~ and no one ever likes to relinquish a p~·actice that others think he . performs w ell. In the final analysis, however, the main reason is probably that the full magnitude of the costs of interlibrary lending have seldom really been recog- nized by librarians themselves. This is perhaps because few libraries have developed sufficiently ·sophisticated cost accounting systems to enable them Whither Interlibrary Loan? I 399 to state with certainty just how much -they do invest annually in their interli- brary loan operations. Occasional ad hoc studies however, mostly of the .. time and motion" type, have revealed discom- fittingly high costs of even the simple operations of identifying and retrieving an item. requested for interlibrary loan; of recording, wrapping, and shipping it; and finally of discharging and replac- ing it on the shelf when it is returned. Indirect costs such as internal and exter- nal administrative overhead, personnel development costs, and physical mainte- nance have seldom been considered.4 In any final analysis, moreover, still other factors ought also to be calculated into any accurate determination of total cost, such as the value of the expertise that went into the original selection of the title, an appropriate share of the original purchase and processing costs of the volume, and a portion of the cost of preserving it over its lifetime. Some have estimated the total cost of a single i.J:!ter library loan to be as high as $8 within the lending institution alone. If this figure is assumed to be ap- proximately accurate, it may be seen that a library that lends 5,000 more ti- tles annually -than it borrows is spending $40,000 a year in service not to patrons from within its own supporting constit- uency but to other institutions entirely. Indeed .sorne large libraries have estimat- ed that they are spending in excess of $100,000 per year on interlibrary le'nd- ing more than they are benefiting from it. The- best-willed institution on earth cannot long afford to carry such a bur- den. Indeed there is a -troubling moral question here as to whether an adminis- trator of a large library, especially a private library, may not be violating his responsibilities as the steward of his in- stitution's bibliothecal assets when he allows -this kind of dissipation to occur at all. A glimmering recognition of this di- lemma is now beginning to emerge on 400 I College & Research Libraries • September 1972 a few fronts. Two of the fifty states have recently implemented programs wherein the libraries within them that are primarily lenders are paid from state funds for lending to other li- braries within the state. There is also talk of developing such a system on a national level. A national program would be infinitely better than local or regional programs becaus·e reader needs are not respecters of geographical or po- litical boundaries. There is no logic, for example, to .the present situation where- in Columbia University is reimbursed $4.50 by the state of New York for a loan to the library ~at Skidmore College when it renders the same service in the same day to the library at Swarthmore completely free because the laUer is lo- cated in Pennsylvania. Concurrent with discussion of a national plan, there are also discussions taking place among a number of large private libraries about the possibility of establishing a stan- dard charge for all interlibrary loans, whether to be reimbursed by a state pro- gram, a national program, a borrowing library, or the ultimate recipient of the service-the patron who finally receives the book in the borrowing library. Clearly this ferment of activity is leading somewhere, but no one is as yet prepared to predict just where. There are troublesome questions involved in any pay-as-you-go interlibrary loan pro- gram that need first to be resolved. One such question is "Who should pay?" Certain trends on the national scene seem to be toward letting such charges fall where the benefit is derived-name- ly in this case on the individual scholar for whom the book is borrowed. Not only does such an ·arrangement seem to satisfy neatly the current management quest for accountability, but it also re- lieves fear in some quarters of a user taking advantage of the system-for ex- ample, of someone promiscuously re- questing twenty loans where one might do since the state or the library rather than the user is paying the cost. Experi- ence with state-reimbursed loans, how- ever, in New Jersey and New York seem thus far to indicate little need for fear on this score. This view seems also to have been fortified a decade ago when most libraries discontinued passing on to their users the postage charges in- curred on their behalf in interlibrary borrowings. Another question that would need to be resolved in ~any paid interlibrary loan system is whether or not the present In- terlibrary Loan Code would continue to be adequate or would have to be re- vised. Would borrowings become per- missible for undergraduates, a practice currently discouraged by the Code but allowed under New York State's NYSILL plan at state cost? Does the ability of a college library to borrow books for its undergraduates hinder its own natural growth rate? Perhaps. On the other hand, the line separating un- dergraduate instruction and research from work on the graduate level be- comes less distinct daily. Maybe it has become meaningless. Another troublesome moral problem is determining the proprietary rights of a paid borrower in the material he seeks. As long as interlibrary loan remains free there is no question but that ser- vice will be made available to him after all local needs for the same material have been fulfilled. Will a paying bor- rower actually purchase a share of ac- cess to the material he borrows equal to that of the local patron, or does he con- tinue to gain only extraordinary access after local needs are met? If the latter, he presumably should be charged some- what less .than the cost to the local insti- tution of "first-class" ~access. How should an appropriate lending fee be determined? The most rational · answer would probably be based on a cost accounting effort-namely the total cost of performing the transaction. An- other approach might be for a lending institution to recalculate its rates annu- ally simply by dividing the total library operating expenditure by ·the total num- ber of circulations with the quotient serving as the unit charge for each in- terlibrary loan during the subsequent twelve months. Some librarians feel (and .this concept is incorporated into New York State's program) that an equitably paid interlibrary loan system should involve two fees: one for receiv- ing and attempting to fill an interlibrary loan request, and another for actual success in delivering the needed volume. Certainly there is some sound logic in having two fees. These concepts are based upon the idea that each lending library would cost out its own operations and settle upon its own schedule of charges. There is some logic behind this scheme in that every library's costs are unique unto itself and should be fully reim- bursed under any truly equitable pro- gram. Yet variant price schedules would create what would in effect be a chaotic market wherein borrowers would be in- clined to "shop around" for the best price. Strong arguments seem therefore to militate in favor of one standard na- tional price for interlibrary loan, per- haps based upon average costs in a sam- ple of lending libraries, periodically re- viewed. Another complication lies in the way of implementing anything other than a nationally-funded program of inter- library loan: the enormous overhead cost to the lending institution of main- taining separate accounts for each of its borrowing institutions, of rendering periodic invoices, conducting correspon- dence, collecting and depositing, writing off bad debts, and other commercial paraphernalia. Present ·state programs permit one central billing, made peri- odically to the appropriate state agency, and the receipt and crediting of one pe- riodic check, thereby vastly facilitating Whither Interlibrary Loan? I 401 the paper work involved in a paid inter- library loan program. Another possible method of mitigat- ing :the above difficulty might be the use of a nationally recognized interlibrary loan scrip of the kind proposed several years ago for purchasing photocopies. Such coupons could be purchased by li- braries from a national agency and one sent accompanying each interlibrary loan request. Whenever a library that lends more than it borrows accumulates a superabundance of coupons, it could return them to the national agency in exchange for face value reimburse- ment. Local accounting requirements, of course, might in some institutions hamper efforts to get these reimburse- ments credited where they can be best used by the library. A very substantial problem in the way of any priced interlibrary loan program is its relation to photocopy pricing schedules. Of the many factors enumer- ated above as making up the real costs of interlibrary loan service, all are ex- actly the same for meeting a photocopy request, in addition of course to the ac- tual costs of making the copy. Thus if, for the sake of discussion, the hypo- thetical $8 handling cost for inter- library loan is held to be valid, .then a similar handling charge would seem to be warranted in processing photocopy. An amount in that range is considerably greater than is presently being charged by any library in the country. If all charges were the same, of course, most large libraries would probably prefer to furnish photocopy in lieu of loan be- cause their materials normally would not need to be off the shelf as long. Some small libraries also would for the same price probably prefer photocopy because they can retain the purchased piece to augment their collections against possible future need. Presum- ably photocopy charges to off-the-street patrons in large libraries would also be 402 I College & Research Libraries • September 1972 substantially influenced upward by any such revamping of the interlibrary- loan/ photocopy structure. At any rate, it is clear that any pro- gram of paid interlibrary loan, whether nationally or locally funded, will bring with it a host of complications. The number of interlibrary loans would doubtless be vastly reduced because of the resulting relocation of their aotual cost from the supplier to the user. Com- ing at a time when there is growing de- sire to free up rather than restrict the How of the materials of scholarship, any such discussion is sure to elicit a spate of bad publicity for the large li- braries that ·seem to favor it. Unless it is widely and clearly understood, it would likely be a very unpopular oause. Yet it might lead to salutary wider- spread recognition of the very high costs of library services in support of advanced studies-a recognition that is certainly long overdue. Careful ground- work appears to be called for before such a program can be initiated. REFERENCES 1. There are few proven data to confirm such an estimate. Sarah K. Thomson, however, in her D.L.S. thesis submitted at Columbia University in 1967 and entitled "General In- terlibrary Loan Services in Major Academic Libraries in the United States," reported that 69 percent of all academic loans in the nation were made by sixty-three libraries. 2. Interlibrary lending by academic libraries doubled between 1965/66 and 1969170 with 66 percent of the increase occurring in libraries holding more than a half million volumes. ILL traffic is expected to increase by a like amount again by 1974175. Vernon E. Palmour et al., A Study of the Character- istics, Costs, and Magnitude of Interlibrary Loans in Academic Libraries ( Rockville, Md.: Westat, Inc., Sept. 1971 ), p. 55. 3. A fascinating method of quantifying this ac- cumulating inequity in large libraries is re- ported by R. H. Blackburn, "Of Mice and Lions and Battleships and Interlibrary Things," IPLO Quarterly 13:68-79 (Oct. 1971). Utilizing Lanchester's Theory of Combat, he likens ILL requests to naval sal- vos, wherein we "imagine one blue battle- ship in an engagement with two green ships. If we assume all three ships to be of equal size and speed and firepower, each able to fire one broadside per minute, then the blue ship will be shot at twice a minute but each green ship only once in two minutes: the advantage of the green ships, and the rela- tive hazard sustained by the blue, is there- fore four to one. In the same way, three ships against one would have an advantage of nine to one." 4. Palmour, A Study of ... , p. 14-15, 24 as- sumed "more or less arbitrarily" an internal overhead rate of 50 percent of direct labor costs in arriving at its average lending costs for large academic libraries amounting to $2.12 per unfilled loan request and $4.67 for a filled loan request. Institutional overhead outside the library did not figure in these calculations, nor did the considerations raised later in the present paper. Conse- quently, Palmour pointed out, "the cost esti- mates given are almost surely underestimates of the true costs of interlibrary loan." Many librarians in large libraries will doubtless agree.