We Sincerely Regret to Inform You That the Material You Have Requested Is Unavailable via Interlibrary Loan

This paper outlines the preliminary results of the authors’ research study on one consortium’s interlibrary loan and collection development practices for returnable items. Local practices and policies that appear to have affected other member libraries are outlined. The audience will consider whether this analysis identifies concerns that they should investigate with their own consortium partners. Do local collection development decisions have an impact on consortium resource sharing agreements? And does it matter? This study looks at collection development and resource sharing budgets, practices, and policies for returnable items. It considers the possible effects of widespread changes in collection development practices on interlibrary loan operations, particularly within a consortium but potentially across all lending partners. The most basic collection development goal is to provide the materials that meet the research and teaching needs of the local institution. In terms of providing access to monographic materials, that means buying a (shrinking) core of print and electronic materials prospectively through firm orders and approval plans, leasing appropriate e‐ book packages that might disappear, and scoping a larger set of materials for potential demand‐ driven acquisition. Then, at the (ever‐growing) periphery is the content that is not have immediately available. Resource sharing is, for most libraries, an integral part of providing access to the corpus of information resources. However, most libraries make collection development decisions independently of others in their consortium. The ability for resource sharing officers to provide access to that global corpus is predicated on the idea that other collections officers have already identified and purchased materials that they are willing and able to share. Collection development officers claim to be radically scaling back, changing purchasing channels, and shifting formats. Because some of these decisions (e.g. moving to e‐book only purchasing, reducing prospective purchases, considering certain categories of materials out of scope, etc.) may reduce the content available to share with other libraries, the authors wanted to examine what effect these behaviors might have on interlibrary loan activity within a consortium. The assumption is that someone out there, hopefully in a preferred consortium, is surely buying that content and they can loan it. In the rush to move to new collection development models, will libraries have collections that can be shared sustainably? What, will that mean for the ability to provide a robust interlibrary loan service through a preferred consortium? Utah State University and the University of Kansas are both a part of the Greater Western Library Alliance (GWLA), whose mission is to deliver “cost‐ effective and high‐quality information services to its member institutions and their clientele.” Comprised of 33 academic research libraries, primarily west of the Mississippi, GWLA serves over 650,000 undergraduates, 150,000 graduate students, and 41,000 instructional faculty. In 2012 the shared collection was comprised of more than 130 million volumes and member combined materials budgets exceeded $310 million dollars per year. The Greater Western Library Association has a long history of resource sharing and has developed and implemented policies that both speed material delivery and increase the convenience of the service. For example, GWLA Copyright of this contribution remains in the name of the author(s). http://dx.doi.org/10.5703/1288284315615 Plenary Sessions 75 uses expedited shipping and provides a twelve‐ week loan period. The underlying philosophy is for lenders to “treat other member libraries’ patrons the same as their own.” (Kochan, 2013) The GWLA Collection Development Committee also has a history of collaborative projects and group purchasing. More recently it has begun exploring what it might mean to do some kind of collaborative collection development. In determining if the project should be retrospective or prospective or both (or neither), it becomes clear that issues surrounding the unique needs of each institution, the size of the consortium, and the scope of the data for analysis are all very challenging for a group of volunteers to manage.