THE EFFECTS OF INSTRUCTION IN THE USE OF PSYCLIT ON INTERLIBRARY LOAN

This study examines the impact that bibliographic instruction has on i nterlibrary loan, focusing on PsycLIT, the CD-ROM version of Psycholog ical Abstracts. The major finding is that, contrary to expectations, i nterlibrary borrowing of journal articles indexed by Psychological Abs tracts actually decreased after the installation of PsycLIT, as a resu lt of the intensive instruction of users. Other factors examined are t he number of journals from which articles were requested, the mean age of requested articles, and the difference between faculty and student requests. Stress is placed upon the importance of educating users to seek articles that are owned by their library before using interlibrar y loan services to acquire other articles.