Dear colleagues
We are in the process of reviewing our inter library loan service and 
evaluating good practice across the sector. If you are able to answer the 
following questions regarding how you operate the document supply service 
in your library we would be really grateful. If you are a specialist art 
and design library we would particularly welcome your responses. I will 
summarise for the list.
Many thanks for your help.
Helen


Document Supply Questions

Promotion of Document Supply
•	How do you promote your DS service?
•	Are there any differences between promotion to staff / students / 
researchers?
•	Do you have any promotional materials that you distribute (and can 
we have copies please)?
•	Do you have any future plans for changes to the way you promote DS?

Document supplier (photocopies)
•	Do you provide photocopies for other libraries?
•	How many requests for photocopies do you receive?
•	How much do you charge per copy?
•	How much time do you spend on this task?

Add address service
•	If you use Add Address when do you ask for the Copyright signature 
for journal articles?
•	If you accept digital signatures, how do you store the electronic 
Copyright declaration forms?
•	Have you experienced any initial problems with the Add Address 
service?
•	Do you offer the service to both staff and students?

Electronic supply
•	What types of document delivery do you use at your library? a-SED, 
b-Ariel, c-HESS, d-Add address
•	If you use HESS rather than SED and Ariel delivery, what are the 
advantages of this?
•	If you use Ariel and SED rather than HESS what were your reasons 
for continuing with this service?

Copyright
•	What document supply material do you put on your VLE? 
•	How do you manage access to this to prevent any breach in copyright?
•	How do you manage the copyright declaration forms? i.e. getting 
them signed and how are they stored.

Systems
•	Which Library system do you use?
•	Do you use it to run any reports? If so what are the purpose of 
these? i.e. statistics, letters, emails

Statistics
•	Do you keep statistics on your DS service? If so what statistics do 
you keep?
•	Are these counted manually? Or do you use system generated reports 
to work out the data?



Charges and limits
•	How much do you charge for Document Supply photocopies from the BL?
•	How much do you charge for Document Supply books from the BL?
•	If you acquire non BL document supply items, are your charges the 
same?
•	How much do you charge
  staff?
  research students?
  undergraduate?
  postgraduates?
•	Do you allow DS requests from 1st year undergraduates?
•	Do you charge for DS renewals? If so, how much?
•	Do you charge for non collection of DS items? If so, how much?
•	Do you charge for DS overdues? If so, how much?
•	Will the BL’s price rise in August 2008 influence your charging 
policy?
•	Does the DS budget come from library funds or is there a 
contribution from academic departments?
•	Do you allocate part of the library budget to academic departments 
for DS?
•	Is there a limit to the total number of requests users are allowed?
•	Is there are a limit to the number of free requests? Do you supply 
some DS items free and then charge?
•	Do academic staff have to countersign student requests?

Customer Service 
•	Do you have service level agreements and if so what are they? 
•	Do you aim to process requests within a specified time frame and if 
so what is that time-frame? 
•	Do you aim to supply requests to users within a specified time-
frame and if so what is that time-frame? 
•	Do you meet these targets? 


•	What is the size of your DS budget?
•	How many students in your HEI?
•	How many library staff work in DS? Do they work exclusively on DS 
or do they also have other duties?
•	(Libraries with more than 1 campus) Does each library site operate 
their own DS service or are any DS functions centralised?
•	Does the library operate a cross campus interlending service? 
If so, do users request both through the LMS?
Do users mistakenly request DS items when they mean to request cross campus 
ones?



Helen Bacon
Academic Liaison Librarian
University College for the Creative Arts
at Canterbury, Epsom, Farnham, Maidstone and Rochester
Falkner Road
Farnham
Surrey
GU9 7DS
Tel +44 (0) 1252 722441
Direct  +44 (0) 1252 891485
Web: www.ucreative.ac.uk