“The RUSA STARS Executive Committee charged the International Interlibrary Loan Committee with evaluating trends in international interlibrary loan (ILL) and resource sharing, to develop materials and resources for international ILL practitioners, and to promote international ILL resource sharing efforts. Since information concerning international interlibrary borrowing and lending is limited, the Committee identified information gathering as an early step.
At the 2006 ALA Annual Conference in New Orleans, the Committee decided to create a survey to assess the state of North America’s international interlibrary services. Committee member Aimee Lind, librarian at the J. Paul Getty Trust, collected committee notes, drafted and redrafted the survey. Lynn Wiley, librarian at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, coded the survey into a web-based
instrument. The final version of the survey was approved by RUSA STARS after the 2007 ALA Midwinter Conference. In the spring of 2007, Jennifer Cella (Chair) and the 2007 International Interlibrary Loan Committee members publicized the survey on four major national ILL-focused listservs.
The committee conducted the survey with the intent of tracking issues and practices related to international interlibrary loan activity. The survey results will help guide the committee in developing tools to help resolve issues that may hinder international resource sharing. The survey would also uncover opportunities to promote and expand both the use of and the participation in global ILL services. Specifically, the survey seeks to determine what types of libraries in the U.S. participate in international interlibrary services as borrowers and lenders, to what extent libraries work internationally, and what tools and services survey participants use to go global.” – quoted in Background and Introduction of the 2007 Executive Summary
You can access the 2007 Executive Summary here.
Additionally, you can find a paper building on the results of the survey, Lending and Borrowing Across Borders: Issues and Challenges with International Resource Sharing, authored by Tina Baich, Tim Jiping Zou, Heather Weltin, and Zheng Ye Yang, here.
