Primary clientele as a predictor of interlibrary borrowing: a study of academic health sciences libraries

Statistics obtained from the Association of Academic Health Sciences Library Directors (AAHSLD) member libraries were studied during 1991/92 to determine whether the size of the primary client pool is a better predictor of a library's interlibrary loan (ILL) borrowing than is collection size. In libraries with collections of fewer than 70,000 serial and monograph titles, size of the client base explained 25% of the variation in ILL borrowing. No measure of collection size helped explain a greater percentage of the variability. This relationship was not found in libraries with collections of more than 70,000 titles. Further research into the predictors of ILL borrowing volume in the relatively controlled environment of the OhioLINK system is proposed.