Abstract
Many libraries are engaging in interlibrary loan purchase-on-demand without fully acknowledging all of the costs of adding such titles to their collections. This study compares the costs of monograph interlibrary loans and the costs of monograph accession, including staffing overhead costs for both. In order to be truly cost-effective, interlibrary loan purchase-on-demand titles must have a minimum projected circulation, depending on the base price to purchase the item. A review of current patron-driven acquisitions models associated with interlibrary loan purchase-on-demand is included.
Notes
1 It should be noted that ARL did not designate the mean cost of a mediated returnable (i.e., monograph) transaction. Included in the $17.50 cost is also the mean cost to borrow a non-returnable (i.e., article). Article requests represented 56% of the total mean cost of borrowing (CitationJackson, 2004, p. 61), which implies that the cost of a monographic mediated borrowing request is more than the cost of an article mediated borrowing request. Unfortunately we have no way of knowing just how much more.
2 When an item is taken off the shelf but not checked out and is left on a library table or returned to specially designated shelves for reshelving, it is assumed a user perused it “in-house.”
3 Ideally, here a certain number would be added to each transaction to account for the costs to circulate an item, to reshelve it, and any other costs accumulated over lifetime ownership of a monograph. The most current report on these costs was conducted in 1986–1987 (CitationBattaile, 1992, p. 10). The cost to circulate an item was $0.76, including “labor and benefits, departmental cost allocation, library overhead allocation, and university overhead allocation” (CitationBattaile, 1992, p. 10). The cost to shelve and item was $0.15. Inflation should be taken into account but so must a probable overall cost savings due to automation. Because of this, even if $1.00 was added to the cost-per-use of each item it would only be an estimate, and a relatively small addition to the overall cost. As such, since the updated costs are conjecture at best 25 years later, they have been left out of the current study, hopefully balancing the cost of a monograph ILL borrowing request which is more than the average cost for all borrowing transactions, as was stated in the footnote above.
4 If indeed CitationLawrence et al. (2001) included the cost to initially acquire a title as well as to catalog, label, circulate, shelve, reshelve, and eventually deselect it over its total life cycle, then their findings that a monograph would cost over time $343.03, or over seven times their average cost to purchase a book ($47.78), would be extremely relevant here. Again, since the report is inconclusive on this matter the data cannot be used.
5 This figure is likely much higher than titles purchased in a traditional way (just-in-case models). Many acquired books never receive one check out, let alone more than one. However, in some cases it is still more cost-effective to borrow multiple times than to buy—even considering the likelihood of another circulation after the initial use.
6 It is unclear whether CitationLawrence et al. (2001) included initial acquisitions and cataloging costs (i.e., the costs to add an item to the collection) in their lifecycle cost for a monograph or if cataloging costs were only tracked once the item was fully accessioned (i.e., the cost to actually keep an item in the collection over time). Because of this ambiguity, their numbers are difficult to use in a study such as this.