Interlending Services: Trends, Languages, and use for Collection Development at North-West University

ABSTRACT

This paper uses the bibliometrics methods to analyse the interlending service trends, language and collection development at the North-West University. The results show that despite some challenges, ILS services at the NWU decreased. More than 98.5% of all documents requested are in English language followed by Setswana and Afrikaans. Out of the 535 books requested by the Mafikeng Campus, 138 were added to the collection of the library. These results point to a need for academic libraries in Africa to adopt strategies for the development of African languages. The results support the continued use of ILS data for collection development purposes.

KEYWORDS:

• Collection development
• document supply
• interlending
• interlibrary
• language
• resource sharing

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Ms Motlalepula Baas, the ILL librarian at NWU-Mafikeng Campus, for providing us with some of the data used in this study. The insights of the two anonymous reviewers are greatly appreciated.