Top performing interlending operations: results of the Australian benchmarking study

Abstract

During the year 2000 over 100 Australian libraries across all sectors participated in a comprehensive study of interlending and document delivery. The study used a survey to measure costs, turnaround time, fill rate and user satisfaction. The survey was based on the Association of Research Libraries study, Measuring the Performance of Interlibrary Loan Operations, conducted by Mary Jackson with North American research libraries. The article reports on the following findings and implications for Australian libraries: what distinguishes high performing document delivery operations in 2000; what the costs are; whether there are differences between sectors; how the study will be applied to improve Australia’s national resource sharing system.