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WorldShare® Interlibrary Loan

OCLC Resource Sharing facts and statistics

Number of libraries represented worldwide

10,161

Number of countries where OCLC Resource Sharing is used

56

How often a request is filled through OCLC Resource Sharing

every 2 seconds

Since the introduction of OCLC's first interlibrary loan service in 1979, use of OCLC's Resource Sharing services has continued to grow. Below are some key statistics about the current use of these services.

Top interlibrary loan requests

OCLC has mined data collected through use of OCLC Resource Sharing services to provide member libraries with lists of the monographs and journal titles most requested through the service. The lists below show the most-requested monographs (books) and journal titles (articles) requested via OCLC Resource Sharing over a one-year period, from July 1, 2015, through June 30, 2016.

Please contact us with suggestions for other resource sharing data of interest to you.

Top journals

  1. Pediatrics
  2. JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association
  3. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
  4. The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry
  5. Social Science & Medicine
  6. Computers in Human Behavior
  7. Teachers College Record
  8. Community College Journal of Research and Practice
  9. Personality and Individual Differences
  10. Neurology

Top monographs

  1. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
  2. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
  3. The life-changing magic of tidying up by Marie Kondo
  4. Me Before You by Jojo Moyes
  5. When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
  6. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
  7. The Martian by Andy Weir
  8. Storm Clouds Rolling In by Ginny Dye
  9. The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
  10. Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel Brown

Top reasons for no

We encourage libraries to give reasons for saying no to interlibrary loan requests as much as possible to provide the borrowing library with this much needed and valuable piece of information. This list details the top reasons libraries were unable to fill requests. The report covers activity from July 2014 to June 2015.

Reason Count
UNSPECIFIED Total 4,769,570
IN USE ON LOAN Total 1,552,026
LACKING Total 1,500,464
AGED TO NEXT LENDER Total 1,347,209
NON CIRCULATING Total 1,182,703
NOT ON SHELF Total 715,512
NOT OWNED Total 672,601
OTHER Total 664,427
BORROWER REFUSED CONDITIONS Total 499,590
POLICY PROBLEM Total 474,560
AGED TO UNFILLED Total 270,260
AGED TO SAME LENDER Total 240,335
LOST Total 182,565
COST EXCEEDS LIMIT Total 165,533
NOT FOUND AS CITED Total 161,582
ON ORDER Total 146,381
ON RESERVE Total 96,514
REFERRAL Total 72,825
VOLUME ISSUE NOT YET AVAILABLE Total 69,956
RETRY ON YYYYMMDD Total 63,048
ON HOLD Total 60,536
AT BINDERY Total 54,460
IN PROCESS Total 52,912
AGED TO EXPIRED Total 41,545
CHARGES Total 35,573
POOR CONDITION Total 29,974
PREFERRED DELIVERY TIME NOT POSSIBLE Total 21,662
LACKS COPYRIGHT COMPLIANCE Total 5,849
LOCATIONS NOT FOUND Total 4,942
REQUESTED DELIVERY SERVICES NOT SUPPORTED Total 3,032
AGED TO RETRY Total 1,155
AGED TO RETRY PENDING Total 890
EXPIRY NOT SUPPORTED Total 748
FULL TEXT OPTION - INVALID ISSN Total 702
PREPAYMENT REQUIRED Total 312
FULL TEXT OPTION - CANNOT COMPLETE Total 263
FULL TEXT OPTION - INVALID MAXCOST Total 105
FULL TEXT OPTION - MISSING EMAIL Total 58
FULL TEXT OPTION - NO HITS Total 57
FULL TEXT OPTION - INVALID DATE Total 14
FULL TEXT OPTION - MISSING ARTICLE Total 12
RESPONDER SPECIFIC Total 5
FULL TEXT OPTION - MISSING DATE Total 4
MANDATORY MESSAGING NOT SUPPORTED Total 3
Grand Total 15,162,474

Top lending and borrowing libraries

These are lists of the top libraries in the OCLC network for loan requests made and for borrowing requests created. The time frame is from July 2015 to June 2016.

Top 10 lending libraries

Institution name Symbol
University of Texas at Austin IXA
University of Chicago CGU
University of Michigan Library EYM
Minitex MII
Pennsylvania State University UPM
Indiana University IUL
Texas A&M University TXA
The Ohio State University OSU
Syracuse University SYB
University of Illinois UIU

Top 10 borrowing libraries

Institution name Symbol
Mid-Continent Public Library CMI
Indiana State Library SHARE
State Library of Louisiana AGLSL
University of Michigan Library EYM
Northwestern University INU
Texas Tech University ILU
Texas A&M University TXA
University of Maryland, College Park UMC
University of Chicago CGU
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis MNU

OCLC Resource Sharing growth

The data in this chart shows ILL activity by libraries that use OCLC Resource Sharing services for the period between July 2015 and June 2016. It includes the total number of libraries using OCLC Resource Sharing services and the total number of requests created by those libraries. It also includes statistics about the use of Interlibrary Loan Fee Management (IFM) and Article Exchange by OCLC Resource Sharing users.

Total number of OCLC ILL users 10,163
Total number of ILL requests 8,858,368
Article Exchange uploads 1,118,533
Article Exchange libraries 2,998
IFM ILL charges transferred $13,470,052 (U.S.)

WorldShare Interlibrary Loan automates your cloud-based interlibrary borrowing and lending processes though the largest resource-sharing network in the world to save your staff time and to ensure timely delivery of items to the people who need them.

Service availability

  • WorldShare Interlibrary Loan service

    Available everywhere

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Resource sharing revolutionized
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