British Library and document supply
The traditional model of UK interlending in HE (and other sectors) has been based on significant, or in many cases exclusive use, of the British Library Document Supply Centre (BLDSC). Many UK focused library management systems have offered integrated interlibrary loans module to allow automated ordering via BLDSC and management of requests via the ILS.
Ordering process
There is a long standing practice of integrating a British Library ordering workflow into library management systems in the UK. First using a Telnet system (Art-tel) transmitting request lines via modem to British Library and subsequently replaced by integrated email ordering (Art-mail).
Request data was uploaded to LMS along with progress reports on requests via the BL intray service.
Today, British Library uses a simple online ordering interface for submitting requests.
In addition to satisfying from within their own collections, British Library also offered paid for location searches to facilitate sourcing material from third parties such as other universities. This has increasingly been rendered redundant through the development of consortia lending between universities.
During the 2000s BLDSC began to offer digital distribution of document supply and journal articles etc from their born digital collections. Content is emailed to users as encrypted files. Born digital is the default option for request satisfaction now for most copy requests.
Charging mechanism
BLDSC offers a charge per transaction service for both document supply and print loans with differential rates based on delivery times. The majority of end user document supply requests (of for example, journal articles) are supplied on the basis of library privilege (a term in UK Copyright Law) meaning that publication specific copyright fees are not paid. This is dependent, in the case of copying requests, on the requesting library retaining copyright declarations from end users stating that the material is to be used for non-commercial research and private study.
British Library offers discounted preferential fees for library privilege customers which cover the majority of HE requests.
The exception to this is copyright fee paid copies. British Library also offers copyright fee paid services to allow redistribution of journal articles, book chapters etc. to groups of students either physically or digitally via a VLE. In addition to a transaction fee, requesting libraries will pay a publication specific copyright fee.
British Library offers discounted rates for satisfaction of copy requests from their born digital collections.
In the case of loans of printed material, in addition to loan fees BL will also charge additional renewal fees.