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Textbooks and Interlibrary LoanGemma Blackburn a & Robyn Tiemeyer aa Wichita State University , Wichita , Kansas , USAPublished online: 10 May 2013.
To cite this article: Gemma Blackburn & Robyn Tiemeyer (2013) Textbooks and InterlibraryLoan, Journal of Interlibrary Loan, Document Delivery & Electronic Reserve, 23:1, 5-18, DOI:10.1080/1072303X.2013.769040
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Journal of Interlibrary Loan, Document Delivery& Electronic Reserve, 23:5–18, 2013Published with license by Taylor & FrancisISSN: 1072-303X print / 1540-3572 onlineDOI: 10.1080/1072303X.2013.769040
Textbooks and Interlibrary Loan
GEMMA BLACKBURN and ROBYN TIEMEYERWichita State University, Wichita, Kansas, USA
Students unhappy with the high cost of course textbooks are turningto the library to help alleviate the financial burden. There is no con-sensus, though, among academic libraries about how to respondto this demand. While the majority of libraries refuse to fill inter-library loan requests for required textbooks, students continue tosubmit them. An evaluation was done to determine how frequentlystudents use interlibrary loan to request textbooks at Wichita StateUniversity, the costs of such requests, and whether or not a textbookcollection within the library offered a solution to this issue.
KEYWORDS ILLiad, interlibrary loan departments, resource shar-ing, textbooks, textbook collections
INTRODUCTION
Students in higher education are feeling financial pressure to spend moreand more money on textbooks. Most librarians have probably heard com-plaints from students, and occasionally from faculty too. The Higher Ed-ucation Opportunity Act of 1965 was reauthorized in 2008 and addressedcourse textbooks in detail, focusing specifically on increasing transparencysurrounding textbook costs. In 2005, the U.S. Government AccountabilityOffice published a report finding that textbooks are increasing in price attwice the rate of inflation. The report primarily blamed these cost increaseson the additions of CD-ROMs and other supplemental materials included intextbooks, but no reason will help justify to a student why he just paid over$200 for a single book.
How libraries should react to the impact that higher textbook prices arehaving on student costs, or if the library should take any action at all, is still
© Gemma Blackburn and Robyn TiemeyerAddress correspondence to Gemma Blackburn and Robyn Tiemeyer, Wichita State Uni-
versity Libraries, 1845 Fairmount, Wichita, KS 67260-0068, USA. E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]
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up for debate. A review of textbook policies at ARL libraries has shown avariety of responses.
Anecdotally, librarians know what will happen if they own a requiredcourse book. Typically, students rush to be first to check out the book, anda semester-long battle of recalls and hold requests from others in the classwill ensue.
Course reserve has been an option for many decades, with faculty andinstructors placing course materials, including a copy of the class textbook,on reserve. More recently, this practice has been extended to include photo-copies of specific chapters on e-reserve for student online use. However, therecent lawsuit brought against Georgia State University by three academicpublishers for copyright violation is a caution to libraries about the size andnature of material that can be placed on e-reserve. Although the judge’sruling supporting Georgia State does add clarity for academic libraries re-garding e-reserve materials, this clarity may be short-lived, as the publishershave signaled their intent to appeal (Kolowich, 2012).
The ambiguity over e-reserve has led a number of academic libraries,including Wichita State University, to expand the course reserve idea into adefined print textbook collection. These collections typically offer a selectionof required textbooks for short-term use, although there are many variationson the theme.
In absence of a low-cost local option, and the focus of this article,students may turn to interlibrary loan (ILL) for their textbook needs. Broadlydefined by the Interlibrary Loan Code for the United States as “. . . to obtain,upon request of a library user, material not available in the user’s locallibrary,” ordering textbooks does technically fall under the purpose of ILL(American Library Association, 2008).
LITERATURE REVIEW
Issues surrounding the high cost of textbooks have been widely coveredin the literature, with various approaches taken by academic libraries. Toaddress the need to provide low-cost alternatives to students, some librarieshave initiated collection policies for textbooks. Johnson (2012) advocateddeveloping textbook collections in response to specific situations, such asthe campus bookstore not ordering enough copies of a book, or studentsturning to interlibrary loan as an inappropriate bookstore alternative.
Laskowski (2007) describes the implementation of a textbook pilot pro-gram at the undergraduate library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She states, “By not providing access to textbook materials in aconsistent fashion, libraries not only are failing to adequately support currentcurricular needs, but are contributing to ongoing problems such as inappro-priate interlibrary loan requests as well” (Laskowski, 2007, p. 161). High
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Textbooks and Interlibrary Loan 7
prices might also encourage students to choose other extreme options, suchas obtaining pirated copies, or even going without required books (Raschke& Shanks, 2011).
How a library develops its textbook policy can directly affect studentsatisfaction with the library. Inaccurate expectations by students that thelibrary actively collects all required textbooks could lead to overall dissatis-faction with the library (Bell, 2010). The extent of these expectations mayalso vary depending on the demographic makeup of a campus. Internationalstudents may assume that all course textbooks are available in the library, asthis frequently is a trend in their home country (Shaffer, Vardaman, & Miller,2010). Hughes (2010) identified this situation specifically with students fromIndia.
Libraries that do provide all or some of the required textbooks for stu-dents typically report that the service is a success and creates good will withlibrary users. The pilot at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign re-sulted in favorable reviews from students and faculty, but the program wasa financial burden on the library. Crouse (2007) reported that the textbookscollected by the University of Minnesota circulated an average of 3.8 timesper semester, where the average number of circulations for the entire collec-tion was just 2.5 times over the lifetime of each book. Costs for this programwere mitigated by heavy reliance on book donations from faculty, ratherthan taking from the library budget.
Adoption of textbook collections and their availability vary widely. Asurvey of academic libraries by Pollitz, Christie, and Middleton (2009) re-vealed that 67% of responding libraries did not purchase any requiredtextbooks to put on course reserve. In contrast, North Carolina State Uni-versity Libraries began a program in 2009 to acquire at least one copy ofeach required textbook (Raschke & Shanks, 2011). These books are avail-able for short-term loan, to maximize the number of students who canbenefit.
While recognizing that students appreciate the library providing text-books, Imler (2009) suggests that this practice is actually a disservice tostudents because it muddles the roles of the library and the bookstore, andsends the wrong message to students about their responsibility to purchaserequired texts. Another concern about the library collecting textbooks is thatsuch books change editions frequently, but Johnson argues that older edi-tions can still be useful to students and are preferable over having no copiesat all.
The topic of ILL and textbooks has not been covered in depth in theliterature, and professional library association recommendations have beenmostly neutral. The Explanatory Supplement to the American Library Asso-ciation Interlibrary Loan Code for the United States (2008) briefly mentionstextbook lending. There are no firm recommendations for or against re-questing textbooks, but borrowing libraries are advised to notify the lending
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institution before ordering material, such as textbooks, that may requirelonger than the standard short loan period. The Interlibrary Loan PracticesHandbook mentions that academic libraries are still debating whether toconsider borrowing textbooks, but refrains from suggesting specific guide-lines for practice (Kuehn, 2011).
Yang (2011) compiled a list of questions students frequently have aboutILL in academic libraries, and included her responses. The first questionconcerned textbooks. Her response mentions the difficulties of identifyingtextbook requests if they are to be cancelled, recommends building a rela-tionship with the campus bookstore, and admits that many libraries do infact order textbooks through ILL.
An intensive study about student textbook behavior at Oregon StateUniversity revealed that about 5% of students surveyed would always useinterlibrary loan to obtain textbooks, and slightly fewer than 20% wouldsometimes use interlibrary loan for this need (Christie, Pollitz, & Middleton,2009). These numbers are low compared to the percentage of students whowould turn to course reserves or the general library collection instead. Theauthors point out that students are aware of the short loan period of inter-library loan, and this is the main deterrent preventing more students fromsubmitting ILL requests for textbooks.
The textbook/interlibrary loan predicament has occasionally been ex-plored on interlibrary loan discussion lists. A conversation on the ILL-L listin April 2012 revealed mixed sentiments. One response included tactics toidentify and cancel textbook requests, and another library reported that theywelcomed requests for textbooks and had ordered approximately 1,400 ofthem for students during the previous semester. The drawback of not beingable to return the books in a timely manner was identified, as students oftenkept the books until the end of the semester despite the earlier due date.
There have been a handful of studies concerning interlibrary loan pa-trons as collection selectors by turning the borrowing requests into pur-chases. Several articles have added to the literature in this area (Tyler, Melvin,Yang, Epp, & Krepps, 2011; Carrico & Leonard, 2011; Zopfi-Jordan, 2008;Ward, Tanner, & Karl, 2003) but each of them mentioned that requests fortextbooks were rejected as new acquisitions. The high cost of most text-books, and frequently changing editions were listed by Zopfi-Jordan as thereasons for rejection, but he does acknowledge that some other librarieshave differing policies.
Besides deciding whether to assume pro-textbook policies, an alterna-tive stance for libraries is proposed by Bell. He states that the decision toprovide textbooks is perpetuating the larger problem of rewarding for-profitpublishers who are overpricing their product. Instead, he suggests workingwith faculty and administration to advocate for open access alternatives.
Some view the emergence of electronic textbooks as the solution tohigh textbook prices. Raschke and Shanks present an example of negotiating
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Textbooks and Interlibrary Loan 9
a license for site-wide use of an electronic textbook, which resulted insaving students over $250,000 in textbook costs. However, they do note thatadditional funding would be needed to provide this model on a wider scale.And while e-book use may be growing, e-textbooks have not yet reachedtheir full potential. The Oregon State University survey revealed that 93% ofthose surveyed still prefer print textbooks over electronic.
ARL LIBRARY POLICIES
A review of ARL Libraries and their respective ILL policies available onlinerevealed that the majority of institutions do not order textbooks throughinterlibrary loan, nor do they offer an alternative textbook collection outsideof instructor utilization of course reserve.
The data gathering practice for this study checked the webpages of 125ARL institutions for interlibrary policies and textbook collection information.Of the 125, ten non-academic research institutions such as the Smithsonianand Library of Congress were omitted since it was determined that a textbookcollection would not be a relevant service for those institutions. FourteenCanadian ARL libraries were also not included in the data comparison, asthe Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada’s (AUCC) Fair DealingPolicy (2012) specifies “the use of library reserve must not substitute for thepurchase of books, course packs, or other published materials.”
This brought the total number of surveyed institutions to 101. Of these,50 institutions showed clear indication in either their ILL FAQ or on a libraryservices webpage that ILL service would not order textbooks (Figure 1).Thirty institutions remained silent on borrowing textbooks through ILL, and
FIGURE 1 Textbook Practices in ARL Libraries.
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six did not provide online access to ILL policies or required user authentica-tion before viewing. Only 14 academic libraries, or 13.8% of those surveyedindicated they would attempt to fill a textbook request, though 11 of thesedid include the disclaimer that finding textbooks through ILL can be difficultand the request might not be filled.
The ARL institutions reviewed above were also assessed to see if a formaltextbook collection is available to students. From a review of course reserveand collection development web pages, textbook collections appear to bea rare occurrence. Only 14 libraries had information regarding a separatecollection, and some of these were limited to a few subjects, included onlye-books, or were for undergraduate use only. The remaining 85 librarieshad no such information available or directly stated that textbooks are anexpense to be borne by students, not the library.
Several libraries also provided information about textbooks on theirlibrary website. Some of these pages, including the University of Alabama,provide details about the library’s textbook policy. Ohio University alsooffered information to students about how to shop around for the best dealon textbooks.
Johnson makes a case that for students who cannot purchase textbooksdue to lack of availability or cost, “a copy of each and every text on reservein the library” is a “simple solution” (2012, p. 1). Put that way, reservedoes indeed sound like a logical solution for student access to expensivetextbooks. But what impact does the availability of such a collection haveon other library services, specifically interlibrary loan? We sought to answerthis question at WSU following the development of a textbook collectionhere.
WSU BACKGROUND AND CURRENT PRACTICES
Wichita State University is a medium-sized urban university in the Mid-western city of Wichita, Kansas, serving a student body of approximately15,000, with 12% international students. Indian students make up the largestcomponent of the international student body. The Interlibrary Loan depart-ment consists of two full-time employees, one part-time staff member, andtwo student assistants. The department processes over 25,000 requests eachyear.
A textbook collection was introduced to the WSU Libraries for the fall2009 semester using a $10,000 donation from a long-time library supporterwho was concerned about students struggling with the high cost of text-books. As the collection budget was not large enough to support purchaseof all textbooks, guidelines were developed to maximize the impact of ex-penditures. The collection guidelines have been modified since the inceptionof the collection, but currently include the following criteria, listed in order
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Textbooks and Interlibrary Loan 11
of priority. If the first priority is fulfilled, and funding remains, the secondpriority is considered, and so on.
• Book is listed as out of print by bookstore and the acquisitions departmentdetermines that the book is not readily available through online vendorssuch as Amazon
• Course quota (enrollment seats) greater than 200 and book price is at least$100
• Course quota is 100–200 and book price is at least $100• Course quota greater than 200 and book price is $75–$99.99• Course quota is 100–200 and book price is $75–$99.99• Book is requested by a student or faculty member, course quota is 50 or
more, and book price is at least $75
As the collection matures, greater consideration is being given to booksrequested directly by faculty or students.
After completing the ARL review, ILL practices at WSU were examinedto determine if the new textbook collection had affected this workflow. Theinterlibrary loan department’s method of handling textbook requests has notchanged in over twenty years. Though not articulated in a formal policy,the normal workflow is consistent with that of the majority of ARL libraries:requests to borrow current textbooks from ILL are cancelled after the titlehas been verified using a print list obtained each semester from the campusbookstore. This list includes all textbooks required for the semester, and isprinted in order by author last name only.
METHOD
To see how frequently students at WSU use ILL to order textbooks, ananalysis of ILL requests between the fall 2007 and spring 2012 semesters wasconducted. Summer semesters were omitted from the study because of muchlower enrollment.
This analysis also looked at how successful the ILL department had beenin identifying and cancelling textbook requests, and whether the implemen-tation of the Textbook Collection had any effect on the number of textbookrequests placed through ILL.
Digital lists of required textbooks by semester were provided by theDirector of Information Technology at WSU’s Rhatigan Student Center, aswell as the number of those books that were available in electronic format.Lists of all borrowing loans by semester were extracted from the ILLiadsystem into Microsoft Excel.
Ideally, the two sets of lists would be compared using an automatedmethod, but because ILL requests often include abbreviations, misspellings,
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and missing data, lists were compared manually. For each semester, the twolists of books were sorted by author last name and were visually compared.For ILL requests that did not list an author, either the book was searched inWorldCat and the author identified for comparison, or the title of the bookwas searched in the textbook list.
While effective, this method was time consuming and cumbersome andprovided insight into the difficulty ILL staff have when trying to identifytextbook requests.
RESULTS
The analysis reveals that the number of textbook requests each semesterhas been low in relation to the overall number of borrowing loan requests(Table 1). The findings reveal that the number of textbook requests persemester can be erratic, with the number of textbook requests for half ofthe semesters in the study falling outside of one standard deviation (8.21requests) (Table 2). The fall 2008 semester marked the addition of a linkto interlibrary loan services in the header of the Libraries’ Voyager onlinecatalog, which may explain the increase in the number of textbook requestsat the same time. The spring 2011 semester saw 10.7 requests below theaverage of the study period, which does not correlate to any known changein the library that may explain the drop in numbers.
However, the percentage of textbook requests has more than doubledin five years, as seen in Figure 2. This is due in part by an increase in
TABLE 1 ILL Textbook Requests and Other Textbook Options on Campus
Semester
ILLReturnableRequests
ILLTextbookRequests
TextbookCollection
Size
ILL TextbookRequests
Available inTextbookCollection
RequiredWSU
Textbooks
RequiredTextbooks
Available in E-bookFormat
Fall 2007 2047 30 n/a n/a 1629 44Spring
20081625 33 n/a n/a 1545 48
Fall 2008 1827 45 n/a n/a 1562 64Spring
20091632 44 n/a n/a 1455 112
Fall 2009 1690 43 94 5 1443 86Spring
20101793 52 250 10 1428 95
Fall 2010 1632 48 408 13 1451 53Spring
20111860 32 271 5 1471 183
Fall 2011 1558 52 206 5 1541 183Spring
20121481 48 179 4 1483 152
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Textbooks and Interlibrary Loan 13
TABLE 2 Breakdown of ILL Textbook Requests
Semester
ILLTextbookRequests
Number ofStandard
DeviationsFrom the
Mean
RequestsCancelled asa Textbook
TextbookRequests
Cancelled forOther Reasons
RequestsCancelled as aTextbook, But
Are NotTextbooks
TextbookRequests
Ordered in Error
Fall 2007 30 −1.55 18 3 1 11Spring 2008 33 −1.18 21 7 2 8Fall 2008 45 0.28 29 4 0 12Spring 2009 44 0.16 38 0 0 6Fall 2009 43 0.04 31 6 1 7Spring 2010 52 1.13 36 7 1 10Fall 2010 48 0.65 26 5 1 18Spring 2011 32 −1.30 16 13 1 5Fall 2011 32 1.13 37 6 1 10Spring 2012 48 0.65 30 3 2 17Mean 42.70Standard
Deviation8.21
the number of textbook requests, and because of a decline in requests forreturnables through ILL (Table 1).
Despite the relatively low number of textbook requests, the analysisshows that many textbooks are not being identified as such when therequests are received by ILL staff. An average of about 24% of textbookrequests are being sent through ILLiad to OCLC resource sharing instead ofbeing cancelled, with a total of 104 textbooks ordered in error over the fiveyear period (Table 2).
FIGURE 2 Percentage of Textbook Requests by Semester.
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14 G. Blackburn and R. Tiemeyer
An additional downfall of the current workflow is that occasionallya book request will be misidentified as a textbook and cancelled. Suchcancellations happened ten times during the course of the study (Table 2).Many of these requests contained the same author and title similar to a bookon the textbook list.
The existence of a textbook collection, the size of the collection, thenumber of required textbooks at WSU, and the number of e-textbooks avail-able through the bookstore do not appear to have had an impact on thenumber of textbook requests sent through interlibrary loan, as seen in Ta-ble 1. The fall 2007 semester saw the largest number of required textbooks oncampus, but the smallest number of ILL textbook requests. The largest num-ber of electronic textbooks available, 183, was seen in both the spring andfall 2011 semesters, but the number of textbook requests for those semestersvaried considerably, with 32 and 52 respectively—both falling outside of thestandard deviation (Table 2). The Textbook Collection’s first semester saw43 ILL textbook requests. The next semester, the size of the Textbook Col-lection more than doubled, but ILL requests for textbooks increased as well.On average, slightly over 15% of ILL textbooks requests per semester werefor items that were available in the Textbook Collection (Table 1).
The collection averaged 5.7 uses per book per semester (Figure 3). Thehighest use per item was in fall 2011, with an average of 8.57 uses pertextbook. Although the average use per item did vary widely by semester,even the lowest-use semesters had more uses per title than that of the WSULibraries’ print book collection as a whole. For example, in the fall 2010semester the average textbook circulated 2.65 times, but in contrast the
FIGURE 3 Average Use of Books in the Textbook Collection.
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Textbooks and Interlibrary Loan 15
overall use of print books amounted to only 0.03 uses per title, with printbooks two years old or newer circulating an average of 0.19 times each forthe same time period.
DISCUSSION
A total of 104 textbooks ordered in error over the five year period does notappear to be a significant issue considering the over 17,000 borrowing loansprocessed during this time period. However, Leon and Kress’ (2012) studyof the cost of ILL transactions list returnables as the most costly transactions,totaling $12.11 on average. At WSU this adds up to $1,259.44 spent over fiveyears on textbook ILL requests. Had this money been used to purchase tenadditional books for the Textbook Collection at $125 each, at an average useof 5.7 uses per semester, 570 students could have benefitted instead of the104 who placed the ILL requests.
Considering the average use of a textbook in a semester, compared tothe average use of books in the library, a purchase-on-demand program fortextbooks at WSU would make financial sense. As seen from the ARL study,the University of Ohio Libraries routes all textbook requests through ILL toacquisitions to be purchased, and then placed on reserve.
Implementing such a program does require identifying textbooks, andas our study suggests, recognizing a title as a textbook is still a hurdle for ILLstaff, with a high number of requests accidentally ordered. Many textbooksare difficult to identify, as they may not look like traditional course textbooks.Required texts for literature classes, for example, are easily missed.
Another obstacle for identifying textbooks is the format of the textbooklist that is received from the University Bookstore. A print list, ordered byauthor and containing many abbreviations, is difficult and time consumingfor staff to use. This is especially so if the patron neglects to include theauthor’s name with the request.
Three potential solutions have been identified that could alleviate theseproblems. First, a switch can be made from a print list of textbooks to adigital list. As our study revealed this option is easily available and will bea simple solution to implement. By having the list open in Excel format, ILLstaff can use the Find feature to search for keywords in the request, ratherthan browsing a paper list.
Another option is to set up some kind of deflection feature in ILLiad,where books that match the textbook list could be automatically identi-fied. These requests could then either be cancelled or routed to acquisitionsto be considered for purchase. However, some textbooks still would bemissed because of misspellings or incomplete request information and a vi-sual inspection would still be needed to ensure that all textbook requestsare identified.
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A third option is to use an addon for the ILLiad system that will makeidentifying textbooks less cumbersome. WSU currently uses addons for otherpurposes, such as the Voyager online catalog addon developed at the Uni-versity of Kansas, which automates the process of identifying local holdingsfor both borrowing and lending requests. Such an addon for textbooks hasalready been developed at University of Maryland University College, and isavailable for download through the ILLiad Addons Directory on the Atlas-Systems website. The list of textbooks can be placed in a database eachsemester, and ILL staff can query this database automatically with incomingloan requests.
In addition to implementing these options, our study of library practicesindicates that WSU Libraries could also assist students with their textbookneeds by providing more detailed information online. WSU currently has onlya page briefly explaining the purpose and implementation of the TextbookCollection. This would be an opportunity for the library not only to promotetextbook services but also to explain textbook policies, so that students andfaculty will have a clear idea of what they can expect. This page could alsobe shared with incoming students, especially international students.
CONCLUSIONS
The move to e-textbooks may be growing, but the high use of the WSU Text-book Collection and the survey data from Oregon State University shows thatstudents still rely heavily on print textbooks for their classes. Johnson’s ideathat a textbook collection will reduce inappropriate ILL requests is not con-sistent with the data from this study and the WSU textbook collection model.A library with a more complete textbook collection might have differentresults.
The fact that some students are ordering textbooks through ILL that arealready available in the Textbook Collection suggests that they are eithernot aware of the collection, or would prefer to borrow a book they cantake home rather than use for a short time inside the library. However, thefindings do seem to be in line with the Oregon State survey, with studentschoosing to use the textbook collection much more than using ILL to ordertextbooks.
Overall, textbook requests through ILL do not seem to be a major con-cern at WSU considering the low percentage of requests. However, the num-bers have risen over the five-year study where borrowing loans in generalhave declined. As prices continue to rise, it would not be unexpected to seethese ILL requests increase again.
Whether libraries choose to carry copies of all required textbooks ornone of them, or welcome interlibrary loan requests for textbooks or activelycancel them, they need at least to be aware of the growing dissatisfactionof students over the rising cost of textbooks and how higher education is
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responding. If the library cannot afford to provide textbooks, training staffto offer advice to students about less-expensive alternatives, such as rentingbooks from online services, or sharing books with a friend, could helpalleviate their stress and leave them with a positive impression of the library.
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Bell, S. (2010). Textbook turmoil: The library’s role in the textbook revo-lution. Library Issues, 31(1). Retrieved from http://www.libraryissues.com/sub/PDF3101Sep2010.pdf
Carrico, S., & Leonard, M. (2011). Patron-driven acquisitions and collection buildinginitiatives at UF. Florida Libraries, 54(1), 14–17.
Christie, A., Pollitz, J. H., & Middleton, C. (2009). Student strategies for coping withtextbook costs and the role of library course reserves. Portal: Libraries & theAcademy, 9(4), 491.
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