Interlibrary lending in New Zealand: an examination of the balance between resource sharing and accountability

Abstract

The paper examines, from the perspective of librarians, the issue of the balance between New Zealand libraries' accountability to funders and users, and interlibrary lending and resource sharing. In particular, the study concentrates on determining whether under the NZIS transactions should occur at a zero price, or a price greater than zero. The methodology for the investigation includes an analysis of the Scheme's regulations and guidelines, and their effects, a review of relevant economics concepts and their application to this resource allocation problem, and the use of the international postal system as an analogy to discuss alternative models for inter-institutional cooperation. A major survey of libraries was conducted to determine current library practice with respect to the broad area of library cooperation, access to material not owned by the library and attitudes towards new models of library cooperation. The results of this survey are augmented by other research results reported in the literature and statistics gathered by the Joint Standing Committee on Interloan which administers the Scheme. The major conclusion is that while there is not overwhelming support from the library profession to introduce charging between libraries for interlibrary lending, there is sufficient evidence from the other analysis to show that optional charging would allow libraries to meet their funders and users' requirements as well as continue to participate in cooperative arrangements with other libraries. It is envisaged, that in the event of the disbanding or radical reshaping of the current national Scheme, region or sector based arrangements, which are emerging alongside the Interloan Scheme, would become even more significant. Given current library practice and the professional culture of cooperation, it is also envisaged that libraries for which there may be equity issues at stake in a free market environment would continue to be explicitly supported by some other libraries.