Interlibrary cooperation: from ILL to IAIMS and beyond.

Area of Science:

• Medical Librarianship
• Information Science

Background:

• Many hospital library interlibrary cooperative initiatives remain unreported, forming an "invisible" resource-sharing infrastructure.
• These initiatives are crucial for expanding service options for hospital library clients.

Purpose of the Study:

• To provide a broad overview of recent hospital library-based interlibrary cooperative efforts.
• To highlight the diversity and scope of these collaborations across the United States.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of a solicitation from the MEDLIB-L e-mail discussion list.
• Review of descriptions of interlibrary cooperative efforts in the professional literature.

Main Results:

• Over thirty diverse hospital library-based interlibrary cooperative initiatives were identified.
• Examples include interlibrary loan networks, collective purchasing, union catalog access, internet access sharing, and electronic resource consortia.
• Initiatives vary in participant diversity and geographic scope, including local, statewide, regional, and partnerships between academic medical center and regional hospital libraries.

Conclusions:

• Hospital libraries actively participate in a wide array of interlibrary cooperative efforts, significantly enhancing resource accessibility.
• Future possibilities for these collaborations include leveraging the Internet and regional hospital system intranets for integrated information access systems (IAIMS).