The study presents data from 39 colleges and universities predominantly from the USA but also from the UK, France, Spain, Denmark, Israel and New Zealand, among other countries. The 160+ page comprehensive study presents detailed data on budgets, staffing, borrowing and lending, turnaround time, technology use, consortia and partnerships, revenues and costs, eBook lending, special collections lending, audio-visual materials lending and much else.
The summary of main findings was written by Rachel Gordon, the Head of Access and Collection Services and Senior Lecturing Fellow at the Duke University Law Library. Ms. Gordon also contributed some of the survey questions. Survey participants include but are not limited to: Ecole des Ponts, the Naval War College, the University of Auckland, The Graduate Center CUNY, United Nations DagHammarskjöld Library, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, the University of Bath, the university of Birmingham, the University of Haifa, the University of Kent, the University of Washington, Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Missouri, Kansas City.
Just a few of the report’s many findings are that:
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The vast majority of respondents reported that ILL staffing has stayed the same over the last three years.
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Only 10% participated in international agreements or consortia.
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For borrowing requests fulfilled through transfer of paper resources by post or courier, the average turnaround time for articles is between 6 and 7 days and for books is between 7 and 8 days.
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Fifteen percent of respondents use RapidILL
Data in the report is broken out by size and type of college or university, for public and private institutions, by level of tuition, and for academic and non-academic institutions.