INTERLIBRARY LOAN IN UNITED-STATES HEALTH-SCIENCES LIBRARIES - JOURNAL ARTICLE USE

Health sciences libraries in the United States use the National Librar y of Medicine (NLM) DOCLINE(R) system to request more than two million items annually through interlibrary loan (ILL). Ninety-seven percent of all ILL requests are for journal articles. In this study, NLM analy zed four million ILL requests entered into the DOCLINE system during t wo twelve-month periods ending September 30, 1992. The requests were a nalyzed at both the journal title level and article level. Data for th e two years were found to be remarkably similar. Results showed that a large number of journals are required to fill ILL requests and that t here is a relatively low number of repeat requests for most journal ar ticles. Seventy-six percent of journal articles analyzed were requeste d only once, and fewer than 1% were requested more than ten times. Abo ut 39% of journals used to fill ILL requests were indexed in MEDLINE(R ) at some time, while 84% of the articles supplied were indexed in MED LINE. Ninety-two percent of articles supplied were from English-langua ge journals. Sixty-seven percent of articles were published in the mos t recent five years, and 85% in the most recent ten years. The 100 mos t frequently requested articles for each of the two years were examine d to determine characteristics such as language, where they were index ed, and the subject matter. This study has provided valuable informati on for planning of NLM's interlibrary document delivery services and a lso should have significance for libraries and other organizations inv olved in document delivery.