The impact of the electronic journals access on the inter-library loan of the hospital libraries: Analysis of four health sciences libraries

During the year 2003, the Health Sciences libraries of the Clínico San Carlos, La Paz, Móstoles and Ramón y Cajal Hospitals have participated in the consortial purchase of electronic journals that conform the electronic journal collection of the “Virtual Library Laín Entralgo”. Until 2002 the electronic format in our libraries was subordinated to those journals that gave away free electronic access with the paper subscription. Only Móstoles Hospital subscribed to ProQuest Medical Journal aggregator in 2002. OBJECTIVE To analyse the impact of the access to the electronic journals on the interlibrary loan of the four health sciences libraries, comparing the results of the different years and their relation to the consortial libraries. METHODS We have analysed the specific characteristics of each library in terms of volume and antiquity of collection, total volume of interlibrary loans and the loan volume between the consortial libraries, all these in values of requests and deliveries in the last three years. RESULTS Due to the consortial purchase, the libraries’ collections have shown an important increase in size, greater in those libraries with smaller initital collections. The total number of deliveries and requests of documents has decreased, this reduction being more significant between the years 2001 and 2002, and milder with tendency to stabilize in the year 2003. Of the total volume of the Interlibrary loan, more than 73% (2001) is effected within the libraries in the consortium and during these years it has also decreased mildly (62% in 2002 and 60% in 2003). The smaller the library collection, the more requests are made to the consortial libraries and the bigger the library collection, the more deliveries are effected. CONCLUSION During the last three years, our interlibrary loan borrowing volume has decreased, the reduction having seen stronger in 2002 than in 2003. This result is due to some consortial libraries subscribing to electronic journals aggregator in 2001, to the impact of free access to electronic journals through promotional access and the access through unconventional (pirate) methods to electronic journals. In 2003, the interlibrary loan decreased in the consortial libraries due to shared electronic collection