Providing Document Delivery/Interlibrary Loan services from within a Pandemic: Filling in the Gaps ?

Background: On March 11, 2020 the World Health Organization (WHO) characterized the alarming spread and severity of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) as a pandemic. Responding to university directives, as well as professional association recommendations, many academic libraries not only suspended in-person services but also barred access to physical collections for Inter-library loan purposes. Such decisions had a significant impact on interlibrary loan (ILL) operations around the world. This poster describes how University of Louisville's Kornhauser Health Sciences Library (KHSL) not only maintained a continuity of ILL services but also expanded document delivery services worldwide by fulfilling requests for copies of items within the print collection.

Description: Upon approval of the KHSL Director, the Manager of ILL services worked remotely while a staff member came to the library two or three times a week to download print materials requests from the system. The staff member pulled and scanned the requested items from the physical collection. The items included journal articles and book chapters. Pdf copies of the scanned items were delivered electronically to the patron. Usage statistics were kept in order to measure the impact of the new delivery model on overall ILL outcomes. The restriction on sharing actual print items through the postal service remained in place. The risk of the staff member being exposed to the virus was minimized by the implementation of restricted access to the library and the surrounding buildings.

Conclusion: From 2019 to 2020, lending requests increased by nearly 1,000 during the time periods of March 16 - July 2.

Many of the lending requests originated from libraries KHSL had not served in the past; including libraries from Denmark, Sweden, Holland, Great Britain, Hungary, Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea. There was a marked increase in the number of requests from libraries within the United States.

The expansion of document delivery services resulted in a significant increase in ILL revenue generated from exchanges with non-reciprocal libraries. KHSL administration noted a significant increase in ILL lending receipts.