Find It Fail: What ILL can tell us about Challenges related to Known Item Discovery

Abstract

When discovery of known items fail, library users often turn to interlibrary loan for assistance obtaining these materials. ILL staff members then “fill” the requests by directing the user to subscription e-resources or items that are freely available on the web. The resulting transactions (approximately 2,500 per year) provide insight into the difficulties encountered by library users in finding and accessing known items online. Using data gathered from ILLiad, I hope to shed light on which user groups have trouble finding material readily available online, which types of resources pose particular difficulty, and generate discussion about how the Libraries can help users learn to locate these materials themselves.