ABSTRACT
SUMMARY. In the fall of 1994 the university libraries at the State University of New York at Albany, Binghamton, Buffalo, and Stony Brook began a study on the economics of accessing science and mathematics journals by interlibrary loan versus subscriptions. This study was based on an economic model by Professor Bruce R. Kingma. Interlibrary loan patrons were surveyed during the fall of 1994 and financial data was collected on the costs of interlibrary loan and journal subscriptions at these four libraries. Decision rules on the economic efficiency of access by interlibrary loan versus a journal subscription are presented in Chapter VI of this study. The primary results of this study are:
Patrons, on average, “spend” $2.55 worth of time waiting an average of 12.95 days for an article to be delivered. However, given that patrons receive a photocopy of an article through interlibrary loan which they would have had to pay for had the library purchased the journal subscription, the average opportunity cost for a patron per article in this study is $1.68.
While the average willingness to pay for priority delivery by patrons is $2.55, some patrons are willing to pay over $20 for a guarantee of one-hour delivery or over $8 for one-day delivery.
The opportunity cost of $1.68 per article, when added to the cost of delivery per article based on the 1992 ARL/RLG estimates, the full cost of delivery via Uncover, or the marginal cost of delivery via SUNY-Express (a SUNY library consortium) yields an economic cost of borrowing of $31.23, $15.60, or $5.60 per article depending on the method of delivery.
The fixed cost of purchasing a journal subscription, other than the subscription price, depends on the number of bindings and 2number of issues per year but is, on average, $62.96 for a year's subscription. The marginal cost is, on average, $0.07 per use.
Given the above cost estimates; a library director can use the following decision rule to determine if it is more economically efficient to provide access to a journal by interlibrary loan: (1) subtract $62.96 from the subscription price (or subtract the fixed costs of the subscription as calculated in Chapter VI), (2) divide the result by the total uses of all subscription years derived from a one-year use study (this assumes an interest rate of zero and an accurate use-study), (3) compare the resulting cost-per-use with the cost per acquisition by interlibrary loan (use relevant numbers from Chapter V and make certain the title is available by some method of delivery). Chapter VII provides more detailed decision rules. [Article copies available from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1–800–342–9678.]
