   
UDT Series on Data Communication Technologies and Standards for Libraries
Interlending in the Emerging Networked Environment: Implications for the ILL Protocol Standard (1995)
1. INTRODUCTION
In many libraries there is a sense that Interlending (ILL) activities are either in, or rapidly approaching, a state of crisis. There is a feeling that costs are out of control; that demand is increasing inexorably while staff and other resources to meet the demand are constantly reduced. This sense of crisis is reflected in a number of ILL automation initiatives currently under way, especially the North American ILL and Document Delivery project sponsored by the Association of Research Libraries.
While these initiatives represent an effort to use technology to find a way out of this crisis, they are also a recognition that communication technology is now sufficiently mature to offer real benefits to both libraries and their users. These benefits include, for libraries:
- reduced labour costs
- the possibility of reassessing acquisition priorities;
- more effective use of existing collections; and
- lower costs for shipping and handling physical documents.
For library users the benefits include:
- access to a much larger “virtual” library through searching union catalogues and other libraries’ collections;
- greatly improved response times;
- simplified research methods through the supply of electronic documents.
The National Library of Canada (NLC) has a clear interest in the direction and implementation of these ILL and document delivery initiatives because it has made substantial investments in ILL systems both for its internal use and for the library community at large. The National Library led the development and promotion of the use of electronic data communications to support library resource sharing. Beginning in the early 1980s the NLC began developing a communication protocol to enable it to automate the messaging portions of its ILL operations. This protocol was eventually adopted as an international standard for ILL messaging, as ISO 10160 and 10161.
Although the standard has been implemented in Canada, and is beginning to be implemented in Europe, there has been little interest in its implementation in the United States. The protocol is viewed by many American librarians and system vendors as both complex and unnecessary in the light of the ILL services provided by the large bibliographic utilities. Many of the current initiatives there are based on existing Z39.50 implementations and seek to integrate document requesting with Internet based searching tools.
This report examines how the ILL protocol fits into the currently available set of library-based networking tools and how its use can be integrated with both discovery tools, such as Z39.50 and the various delivery mechanisms that are beginning to be available.
1.1 Scope
The goals of this paper are to:
- Describe how libraries and the services of information providers such OCLC and the Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (CISTI) can be supported by the ILL protocol.
- Analyze the extent to which the ILL protocol can support patron initiated requests and identify any shortcomings in the protocol in the light of this analysis.
- Describe how Z39.50 and ILL can be used to support information retrieval and the subsequent request of an item.
The primary tool for realizing these goals has been the description of a number of interlending/document supply scenarios that, for each, attempt to identify what communication facilities are required to be able to support them. In each case the investigation has assessed the extent to which the ISO ILL protocol is sufficient to meet the communication needs, and, when it is not, it has identified what additional communication services are required.
This paper does not attempt to provide a comprehensive description of all the ways in which an individual could obtain documents. There are other methods that do not involve a library, these have not been specifically addressed.
1.2 Definitions
The following terms are important in the context of ILL. Some of them are used with a specialized meaning within this document.
- Document:
- In the most general sense a document is an artifact that forms a record of some activity or event. This definition encompasses written text, recorded sound, recorded images both still and moving, data sets generated by sensors of various kinds, etc.
- Document Delivery:
- This term is commonly used to refer to the complete process of supplying a document to its ultimate user, including formulating and issuing the request, as well as managing the physical or electronic delivery of the document. In this sense, the ILL protocol could be seen as a component part of document delivery. In this report, however, a more restricted definition is used, in which document delivery refers only to those processes used to deliver a document to a user after a request has been processed.
- Document Supplier:
- The organization responsible for the physical or electronic delivery of a document. This may be a library that supplies items from its collections as part of an interlending agreement, or an organization that engages in supply of documents as a commercial activity.
- Electronic document:
- A document created or transcribed onto a medium and in a format that will allow it to be transmitted by electronic means over telecommunications networks.
- Interlibrary Loan:
- An arrangement by which a library can make a document that is not in its own collection available to its patron by temporarily acquiring it (or by supplying the patron with a non-returnable version or facsimile of part of the document) from a library that does own it.
- Interlibrary Loan Protocol:
- The international standards for interlibrary loan: ISO 10160 and 10161. These are OSI (Open Systems Interconnection) standards for intersystem communication for ILL. The international standards are in two parts, a service definition (ISO 10160) that defines the ILL services made available to applications using the protocol and a protocol specification (ISO 10161) that specifies the content of protocol messages and procedural rules for exchanging them.
- Intermediary:
- An organization that acts as the requester’s agent in filling an ILL request. When an intermediary is involved, all communication leading to supply of the item is routed via the intermediary rather than taking place directly between the requester and the responder. This is a term from the ILL protocol.
- Protocol:
- Used here to refer to a communications protocol, which is a set of agreed rules and procedures governing the form and content of data communications to allow interoperation to take place between different, and possibly mutually incompatible, systems.
- Requester:
- A library or individual generating an ILL request to be serviced by a responding organization. In some cases the library is the requester, acting for a patron who is outside the system; in other cases the patron will generate ILL requests directly. This is a term from the ILL protocol.
- Responder:
- A library or commercial document supplier that receives an ILL request and may supply the requested item. This is a term from the ILL protocol.
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