This spring marks the five year anniversary of the North American Interlibrary Loan and Document Delivery Project - the NAILDD Project. NAILDD was formed to seek the involvement of private sector vendors to promote technology developments in three areas identified by the library community:

1. development of comprehensive and flexible management software to eliminate paper files in ILL departments;
2. development of online solutions for transaction-based billing and payment of ILL transactions; and
3. adoption of national and international standards to accelerate interconnectivity between and among ILL systems and products.

          Early NAILDD efforts focused on the first two priorities. The NAILDD Project worked with several vendors to enhance management software to meet the NAILDD Project's comprehensive description. Although these early efforts were encouraging, ILL librarians using multiple ILL messaging systems still do not have software that can track requests from multiple systems. The need for comprehensive management software still exists.

          In 1995 OCLC introduced the ILL Fee Management (IFM) system to permit lenders to bill and borrowers to pay via monthly OCLC statements. Nearly 1000 libraries around the world now use IFM; based on a $50 cost for invoicing/payment, OCLC estimates that libraries have saved $30 million using IFM.

          Work on the third technical priority, standards and interconnectivity, accelerated in mid 1995 when the National Library of Canada challenged the NAILDD Project to encourage U.S. organizations and companies to implement the international standard for interlibrary loan communication - the ISO ILL Protocol (10160 &10161, pts. 1-2). The ILL Protocol Implementors Group (IPIG) was formed in late 1995 at an invitational meeting held in conjunction with the CNI Task Force meeting in Portland, OR. As of early 1998, 45 organizations, companies, and projects from ten countries are IPIG members, and many are well along toward complete implementation.

          The Library Corporation (TLC) and OCLC were the first to establish testbeds for message exchange by other IPIGlettes, as members of the IPIG are affectionately know. The British Library Document Supply Centre recently contracted with Fretwell-Downing to build a Protocol-compliant gateway to BLDSC's proprietary Automated Request Processing system by the end of 1998. The Library Corporation has also made available toolkit software to implement the "ILL engine." Joining OCLC and TLC, Ameritech, CISTI, Innovative Interfaces, Inc., Fretwell-Downing, Triangle Research Libraries Network, and the Research Libraries Group have also successfully tested one or more Protocol messages. In early 1997, ISO appointed the National Library of Canada as the ISO ILL Application Standards Maintenance Agency. By the end of 1998, several IPIG members are expected to be using the Protocol on a production basis to exchange ILL requests on a national and international scale.

          Technical improvements alone will not remove all the barriers to effective interlibrary loan. For the past two years, the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has studied the performance of ILL operations of 119 North American research and college libraries. The ARL ILL/DD Performance Measures Study, funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and undertaken in collaboration with the Council on Library and Information Resources, tracked direct costs and fill rates for borrowing and lending operations, and turnaround time and user satisfaction for borrowing operations. Statistics confirm that even with the wide range of performance by both groups of libraries, on average, ILL operations in college libraries have better performance measures than ILL operations in research libraries. Staff salaries represent the major portion of the unit cost for research and college libraries. Summary findings include:

	Research Libraries	College Libraries
Borrowing unit cost Lending unit cost Borrowing fill rate Lending fill rate Borrowing turnaround time Borrowing user satisfaction	$ 18.35 $  9.48 85% 58% 15.6 calendar days 94-97%	$ 12.07 $  7.25 91% 65% 10.8 calendar days 92-98%

          Of the 97 research library participants, only one borrowing operation ranked in the top ten percent for low unit cost, high fill rate, and fast turnaround time: Colorado State University. The University of Chicago reported a very low unit cost and a very high fill rate; four other libraries reported very low unit costs and very fast turnaround time.

          As lenders, only two research libraries recorded very low unit costs and very high fill rates: the University of Alberta and the University of Wisconsin - Madison. Characteristics of high-performing borrowing and lending operations will be summarized in detail in the final report. High-performing operations maximize use of technology, use more support staff in supervisory positions than all research libraries, and maximize use of student assistants. User-initiated ILL systems were also confirmed as cost-effective alternatives to mediated ILL.

          Findings from this Study confirm the three technical priorities identified by the NAILDD Project in 1993 and underscore the ongoing need for products and services to ease the labor-intensive nature of interlibrary loan.

For additional information on:

The NAILDD Project	http://www.arl.org/access/naildd/naildd.shtml
ILL Protocol Implementors Group	http://www.arl.org/access/naildd/ipig/ipig.shtml
ILL/DD Performance Measures Study	http://www.arl.org/access/illdd/illdd.shtml

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