In today’s libraries, ILL specialists are facilitating service that goes far beyond traditional borrowing and lending. Recent innovations in interlibrary loan and library resource-sharing practices have advanced the information-sharing mission of libraries—a sea change that affects and benefits all library operations and staff. This book explores the far-reaching significance of these innovations in ILL for other areas of library activity, from acquisitions and collection development to reference and instruction to circulation and e-resource management and beyond.

Readers will understand that as valuable as traditional ILL remains, ILL librarians are also well-placed to do much more. For example, ILL staff can inform acquisitions and collection development decisions with request data; demonstrate the need to maintain and preserve the long tail of print; advocate for the fair use of copyrighted print material and license terms that safeguard library information sharing in the digital environment; nurture consortial relationships and international cooperation between libraries; and promote the discovery of information, all of which can help librarians meet the information needs of their communities.

Features

• Taps a knowledge base of more than a dozen ILL practitioners who offer diverse viewpoints on all that ILL specialists can do to help connect people and information
• Enables library administrators, whose support ILL needs to succeed, to grasp how ILL is essential to fulfilling the information-sharing mission of all librarians
• Emphasizes how the ever-increasing interconnections between ILL and other areas of library activity behoove non-ILL librarians to be more aware of emerging ILL developments