An Impact Study of Duplicate Requests on an Interlibrary Loan Department

This study, undertaken at the Environmental Protection Agency Library in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, documents the requests submitted to the Interlibrary Loan (ILL) department during a thirty-six day period. Requests are analyzed to determine the number of duplicate requests, or requests for the same article submitted by the same patron. Request analysis is by individual patron, patron employment status, method of request delivery, and by the date and day of request submission. To measure the impact of these requests, the work flow of the ILL depart was observed and a cost analysis undertaken to determine a price per article obtained by the ILL department. Copyright compliance is also discussed and copyright fees for duplicate request contribute to the impact analysis