Openness and Interlending: can they co-exist?
Initially, interlending appears to epitomise open practice. It is open in an honest sense, in that libraries admit the limitations of their holdings, and look to other institutions to supply their readers with their requested items. Historically, this has been in the form of a copy, either paper or, more recently, digital, or a physical loan of a book, piece of music or audiovisual material. It is also a collegial way of working, one that embodies many of advantages of Martin Weller’s advantages of openness, including altruism, efficiency, dissemination and easy collaboration.
Having worked long-term in Inter-Library Loans (ILL), I have been well-placed to observe that it is not so straightforward. There have always been obstacles to open practice and open knowledge within ILL procedures, which have helped contribute to a perspective that it is now “a niche service”, one often juxtaposed against Open Access (OA) resources. Such studies have concentrated on national concerns, so here I would like to offer a brief introduction, from a local perspective, to what I perceive are the main reasons for this view and to outline how new systems offer hope for positive change in future.
Availability & Time
Arguably, the main barrier to openness is that not everything is available for loan. Most libraries restrict lending of items that are over 100 years old, in spite of their condition. Additionally, some texts, regardless of age, are too fragile to be posted, and there are similar concerns with items that are too large or too heavy. Material held in Special Collections worldwide can be digitised and displayed via online portals such as Luna, but not every item that researchers need. For ILL purposes, a scan is usually a percentage of the text rather than its entirety. As this is often a procedure done by dedicated imaging teams, the cost rises, which is passed on to the borrowing library or in some cases, depending on the amount of material required, even to the reader. At a time when ILL charges have been limited, mainly to the supply of articles, this can deter readers, and may prove prohibitive to smaller institutions, denoting another hurdle to open practice, information privilege. Finally, because this is a process that often involves communication between multiple departments, and with items in offsite storage necessitating retrieval, it becomes part of the second major reason that interlending appears a closed or limited service — the time involved.
“I can remember the agony of waiting for inter-library loans when I was a PhD student in the late 90s” Professor, School of Education, University of Manchester.
One of the most common perceptions is that an ILL will take a long time to arrive — an area where the system does fall down against OA resources. In some cases, this can be true — loans of physical stock rely on postal or (more costly) courier services, and with new or unexpected influences (Brexit, Covid-19), it can easily take over seven days for an item to arrive, on top of the inter-departmental process. This means a degree of planning is required on the part of the reader, which in terms of shorter-scale undergraduate projects is not always possible. Even worse, the loan period of the item often starts from the day it is despatched, leaving little study time or the possibility of expensive renewals.
Time can even be a factor with digital resources. Often, with journal subscription packages, only a limited amount of issues are fully available, whether OA or not, and publisher costs prohibit buying complete access to the archive. Conversely, most recent years can be hidden by paywalls. These closed practices are largely responsible for readers looking to social media or, more questionable sources such as Sci-hub, to supply the articles and chapters that they need –there are no charges, and the procedure can be almost instantaneous.
Rapid & RSCVD
However, digital supply can also be seen as a locus where ILL and open practice meet, especially if we review the ways that we work. Different publisher interfaces and download options often confuse readers, and staff can forward an in-stock digital article to them in seconds. As more resources become gold OA, copyright restrictions on supplying outside of home institutions are revised, making web-based supply times as quick as a plea on social media, whilst different digital holdings at other libraries are easily sourced with long-standing open resources such as Jisc Library Hub Discover.
The development of new interlending systems also addresses the problem of time. In the past, these have involved a laborious replication of existing data, and have often been incompatible with other aspects of library management software. Trialled by the University of Manchester during Covid-19, once a request has been placed through its Order an Article portal, Rapid ILL, automatically searches digital and OA resources within groups of libraries. It is designed to save time, allowing ILL staff to focus on more complicated research-based queries.
Whilst the pandemic undeniably halted physical loans, it also provided an opportunity for rethinking ILL procedures. RSCVD (pronounced ‘received’) is an IFLA initiative, run on a voluntary basis for “at least as long as access to library collections is restricted in any part of the world.” Like Rapid, institutions involved do not charge one another, however, this particular system takes open practice even further — there is no subscription fee, which means that it can be more inclusive, reaching public libraries, schools and specialist libraries as well as those in Higher Education. As a large-scale collaboration, it also overcomes problems found at local and national level, such as the supply of articles in languages other than English.
In conclusion
It is not difficult to see how factors such as availability and time have led to interlending comparing poorly against more open practices, particularly Open Access resources. It is also important to acknowledge that for some barriers to openness such as print stock availability, there are no quick fixes, and in this respect, there will always be a demand for a traditional ILL service. However, new systems such as Rapid and RSCVD illustrate how collaboration and open practice can support and enhance the evolution of interlending into a more modern Resource Sharing service, one that truly aims to deliver “access to all the information resources needed in scholarly work.”
