Cost Finding and Performance Measures in ILL Management

Outlines the need for performance measures and costings when one has to decide how to supply documents as quickly as possible at the lowest cost to both the user and the library. There is an increasing awareness of the implications of electronic document delivery for ILL. The most advanced libraries are beginning to use these services as an alternative or supplement to the traditional well-known services. Describes a model that enables one to record both the costs of the tasks performed and the performance - such as speed of delivery, fill rate and so forth. By combining these different sets of measures the library in question will be able to decide which services are the most beneficial under the given circumstances. The model has been developed in co-operation with some Danish university libraries. The prototype has been developed as an application in a relational database.