OCLC interlending and document delivery services
| Date | 01 March 1994 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb040540 |
| Published date | 01 March 1994 |
| Pages | 14-18 |
| Author | Janet Mitchell |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management |
OCLC interlending
and document
delivery services
by Janet Mitchell, Director and
Catherine Charnley, Product Specialist,
OCLC Europe
OCLC provides inter-library lending facilities
for participating libraries in 52 countries
worldwide via the OCLC PRISM ILL system.
This service can be used to borrow
monographs and serial articles from either
participating OCLC libraries or document
suppliers. Enhancements to the PRISM
system currently being implemented are
described. FirstSearch document delivery
options and electronic journal services are
outlined, together with OCLC's plans for
providing integrated access to these and ILL
services.
Interlending
OCLC has provided an inter-library loan subsys-
tem to its members since January 1979. The ILL
subsystem developed from the use of the OCLC
Online Union Catalog (OLUC) as a cataloguing
and resource sharing tool and grew rapidly so that
now 15 years later OCLC participating libraries in
52 countries around the world use the OCLC ILL
system to transact more than seven million loans
annually.
The 50 millionth inter-library loan request was
made by Sonama State University, California on
14 March this year and was filled two days later
by The University of California, Berkeley. The
level of ILL activity continues to increase and the
51st millionth ILL was performed on 26 April
1994.
There are currently 74 European libraries using the
OCLC ILL system either as a primary or second-
ary resource for interlending. A breakdown by
country is shown in Table 1.
Denmark
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Italy
Netherlands
Norway
Slovenia
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
Turkey
United Kingdom
Total
14
2
7
3
1
3
2
6
1
14
14
1
2
4
74
Table 1— European users of OCLC ILL
system by country
The OCLC PRISM ILL system
The OCLC PRISM ILL System was introduced on
14 December 1992 following a 'hot cutover' from
the previous system now known as the OCLC First
System. This immediate changeover was necessary
because of the interactive nature of interlending
which made it impossible to migrate users to a
new system over a period of time.
The PRISM ILL system provides users with access
to three online files:
The OCLC Online Union Catalog which
provides access to over 30 million
bibliographic records and more than 500
million holdings locations for verification of
bibliographic information and identification
of possible lenders.
• The ILL Transaction File which provides
workforms for the ILL transactions together
with a message file for tracking both lending
and borrowing records.
• The Name Address Directory (NAD)
which is used for contact information for
libraries and document suppliers. This
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VINE 96 (September 1994)
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