Despite having a quality and comprehensive collection, the volume of available material and the ease of discovery means that there is still a significant demand for requests for article copies and for loans that are not available from the Library's own collection. Inter-library loans and document delivery services are an alternative form of resources acquisition.
Clients place requests through the online forms site. Requests made include items that are available from the Library collection (sometimes the print collection but sometimes readily available online).
The Library remains a net supplier to other libraries which reflects shrinking collections nationally and is being addressed by a revision in the Inter-Library Resource Sharing Code and schedule of charges which will provide disincentives for over-reliance on the collections of other libraries.
Statistics are for requests completed each year and include all requests handled, including those that could not be supplied or received as this best reflects the workload involved. In practice the number unable to be received or supplied is low. Requests may have incorrect information, be in foreign languages, or in very obscure and difficult to obtain sources.
All Library expenditure is allocated against a SMHS cost centre (0200696) with monthly charge backs to an EMHS cost centre (0500696).
The Australian Interlibrary Resource Sharing (ILRS) Code governs the practice of this service nationally. The Code is was updated in 2019. Obtaining loans and copies via inter-library loan and document delivery (ILLs / DocDel) supplements the Library's own collection. It cannot be a replacement for the Library's responsibility to maintain a collection to meet local needs. ILLs / Doc Del activities are staff-time intensive, expensive and items are sometimes impossible to obtain except via pay per view or purchase.
The majority of document delivery requests are supplied via a national health libraries network system called GratisNet in which copies are provided at no charge to members (there is a membership charge to belong).
Costs are incurred for items requested outside of the network. These are from the National Library of Australia's Libraries Australia (NLA) / Trove service, from a Swiss German, Austrian network called Subito, from the National Library of Medicine (NLM) in the US and via Pay-Per-View (PPV).
Costs are offset for items requested from Australian libraries through the NLA system as income is earned from items supplied to other network members.
* Note that in 2019-2020 most NLM invoices were not received - followed up with them in August 2020.
The Prosentient online forms system used for ILLs and document delivery (that is also used for clients to request searches such as literature searches / training etc) has an annual charge from July 2019 to June 2020 = $763.64 + GST.
Spreadsheet stored - W:\Library\SMHS\Library\KPIs Bonnet Statistics\ILLs DocDel