LIDDAS goes live: how close is Australia to interlending in one easy step?(Local Interlending and Document Delivery Administration Systems)

Libraries have, over the past decade, been involved in a radical revolution in the ways they deliver service to users. Much has been written about projects which have developed innovative solutions to 'break down our walls' by providing digital access. We often read of innovative projects in digitising collection material, offering access to e-collections and virtual reference. One area which has sometimes been thought of as a backroom operation, interlibrary lending (ILL), has seen a transformation in service in Australia through a national project which was successfully completed in May 2003.

Just as 'no man is an island', no library can completely serve all the needs of all their readers with their collection. Australian university libraries and the National Library of Australia have worked together on national infrastructure projects to improve national access to their collections over many years. An innovative automated solution emerged in the 1990s--the Local Interlending and Document Delivery Administration Systems (LIDDAS) project. Professor Schreuder, Vice Chancellor of the University of Western Australia, noted:

    No library can ever meet all the needs  of all its users. So the    ability to request to see books from other  libraries, or to receive    photocopies of articles from journals held  by other libraries, has    been essential to the way in which many  scholars conduct their    research. Australia, with its national  bibliographic database, and    a history of leading-edge investment in  the supporting technology,    is well-placed in this area. (1)  

Australian libraries have a long history of cooperation and resource sharing. A range of infrastructure has developed to support resources sharing--from discovery services to sophisticated automated systems. The first tool developed to directly support resource sharing was a union catalogue of scientific serials held in Sydney libraries compiled in 1899 by W T Dayton. Since then major developments in collection access tools have occurred, from print to microform to online systems. Interlibrary lending has also evolved through many stages, with the current system based on a codification of charges and delivery times from decisions first made in the 1980s.

While there has been a declining trend in recent years in requesting and supplying interlibrary loans, it remains an important service for all Australian libraries, generating approximately one million transactions per year. (2) This decline is most closely related to the purchasing of large e-collections by Australian research libraries such as Sciencedirect and JSTOR.

The infrastructure required for an effective national interlibrary loan system is complex. The key building blocks in Australia in this environment are:

* a national union catalogue, the Australian National Bibliographic Database, provided by the National Library of Australia since 1981 with support from almost 1000 Australian libraries, listing over 40 million holdings as of mid 2005

* a national document delivery system (Kinetica/Libraries Australia Document Delivery) which supports requesting and supply between libraries, provided online since 1989

* a national agreed standard for document supply and loans--the Australian Interlibrary Resource Sharing (ILRS) Code adopted in 2001 covering service standards and charges, and a national payment management system--a part of the Kinetica/Libraries Australia Document Delivery system.

It is because of this infrastructure that Australia could develop a national system, envisaging a new landscape based on a combination of national and local systems. The development of a new framework has enabled considerable attention to be given to the infrastructure for national and local systems to work together--which reached fruition through the LIDDAS project. As Schreuder has commented:

  
   It is one thing to know about the existence of a piece of  information, it is quite another to be able to locate it. This is  where we place heavy reliance on library catalogues. In Australia    we  have the National Bibliographic Database, which acts not only in    many  respects as a national catalogue but also includes information    about  holdings. This is the envy of many other countries--the    United  Kingdom being one--which lack such a central catalogue. (3) 

This paper reports on the genesis of the LIDDAS project, in particular the high level of cooperation between the university community and the National Library of Australia, the work undertaken through the project by participating libraries and consortia, and the outcomes of the project. It also summarises interlending issues which will need to be addressed in future developments.

Gestation of LIDDAS

Through the 1990s Australian libraries were excited by the potential offered by increasing access to services for their users through electronic means. There was considerable optimism that developments in technology, such as the Internet, and the emergence of new protocols to enhance interoperability, could deliver world-class access services to individuals wherever they were.

Australia was well positioned to exploit these new opportunities. Neil McLean suggests that the environment was ready because of:

* the relative isolation from the main…