OCLC WorldShare Interlibrary Loan Trends in 2016

At least once a year, we query the WorldShare ILL database and see how the trends in interlibrary loan are developing. We count titles a little differently than other lists. Rather than splitting into fiction/nonfiction we look at loan requests vs. copy requests (loans of an entire book vs. a request to copy a single article or part of a larger work). The list of top copy requests is, as you might expect, heavily weighted toward the medical, psychological and scientific realms. It’s the loan requests that are more interesting.

Since 2010, we’ve seen some themes and trends in the top loan requests...some of which lead to a few questions we’d like to ask you:

More young adult titles. Are more adults requesting YA titles in your library? Or are young people discovering ILL?

Fewer textbooks. Three in 2010, but only one in 2015. Is your library becoming more reluctant to request/lend textbooks? There are often conversations on listervs about textbooks…to loan or not to loan. Where do you fall?

Lots of movie/TV tie-ins. Out of the 60 titles we have listed, 29 have been made (or are being made) into TV shows or movies. We hear a lot about the “second screen” experience for viewers. Does the book for a show fill a similar need?

Overlap with book clubs. There is a great deal of overlap between our ILL lists and the top Goodreads book clubs. Twenty-five of the top items requested through ILL show up there. Does your library borrow books as well as buy when you’re involved with book clubs?

Why do libraries ILL best sellers?

Many of the books featured in our list are not just popular…but are best sellers or have been highly publicized... I’ve heard a couple theories about why libraries might request popular books through ILL rather than purchase additional copies:

It’s a different budget. Acquisition dollars may be gone, ILL money is still available.

It’s a different department. Someone might have authority to do ILL but not make purchases.

Reluctance to buy for short-term needs. If it’s a run on one title, purchasing a copy or two for something that may be a flash-in-the-pan might seem wasteful to those of us trained to be economical in all things.

This data proves an important point. While librarians have often thought of ILL as being primarily for unique and rare items, it’s clearly not. Which surprises many non-ILL librarians I talk to. There’s an assumption that ILL is mostly used for hard-to-find or unique materials. And while that certainly is the case, we can now see how important resource sharing is for popular works, too (via Christa Starck. Four interlibrary loan trends to watch in 2016).