“The charge of the STARS International Interlibrary Loan Committee is to evaluate 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. The Committee recognized the need for information about international ILL activities as the first step
towards fulfilling this charge. Since 2007 a survey has been distributed every four years. In 2007 the International Interlibrary Loan Committee focused on U.S. libraries regarding their international ILL activities. Results of this survey are available on the STARS website. Subsequently an analysis of the survey results was published in the Reference and User Services Quarterly. As the first snapshot of
International ILL issues, these two documents served to move the conversation on challenges, issues, and success US libraries encountered.
In 2011, the STARS International Interlibrary Loan Committee expanded the survey to include a more international perspective and distributed it to other continents. Data from this survey helped inform the International ILL committee to further explore gaps, concerns, and potential strategies to bridge issues in international resource sharing. In addition to the detailed executive summary,
portions of the survey were discussed at the ILDS conference, and later published in Interlending & Document Supply.” – quoted in the Background and Introduction of the published 2015 Executive Summary
You can access the 2015 Executive Summary here.
Additionally, you can find a paper on the results of the survey, The world is your library, or the state of international interlibrary loan in 2015, authored by Kurt Munson, Hilary H. Thompson, Jason Cabaniss, Heidi Nance, and Poul Erlandsen, here.
