Reading lesson: Interlibrary Loan, Combined Library Catalogues, and Metasearch Engines
The aim of this lesson is to explain how interlibrary loans work and to provide a look at the actual systems that facilitate interlibrary loans.
Interlibrary loan at the SZTE Klebelsberg Library
How to access documents not available at the Library?
Interlibrary loan tools
Combined library catalogues and metasearch engines
Interlibrary loan
at the SZTE Klebelsberg Library
What can someone do if they need a book that is not available in the library where they are registered? By relying on interlibrary loan services, they can borrow the book from another library, regardless of whether the particular library is located in their home country or abroad.
The aim of the interlibrary loan service provided by the SZTE Klebelsberg Library is to make documents not available in Szeged accessible to library users.
What is interlibrary loan?
Practical information about the policy for interlibrary loan at the SZTE Klebelsberg Library and about using the service itself is available on the library website.
In short: For documents not available in any library in Szeged, all registered readers can place a request for an interlibrary loan to borrow a particular book or to get a copy of a journal article or a study. The request can be submitted by filling in an online form, which allows users to enter detailed information about the requested document, with reference to its type, and an indication as to whether it is to be delivered or not if it is located abroad. A requested item may be delivered either in its original format (e.g., in the form of a whole book) or in a photocopied version or an electronic version. Documents not found anywhere in the country are requested by the Library from abroad with the assistance of the National Széchényi Library.
Interesting Facts 1.
Journal articles held at the SZTE Klebelsberg Library have been made available through interlibrary services to libraries even in very distant locations, such as the University of Tokyo Library.
Interesting Facts 2.
In Western civilization, interlibrary loans date back to as early as the 8th century. As for the postal delivery of library items, the first such delivery took place in the 1880s, after the Austrian government allowed interlibrary loans to be made without special ministerial authorization in 1883. 10 years later, in 1893, the first interlibrary loaning policy was formulated in Prussia to govern interlibrary loans between the Royal Library of Berlin and Prussian university libraries.
Source
Interlibrary loan tools
Librarians specializing in interlibrary loans can help readers track down a particular book or an article. However, readers can also gather information themselves beforehand by making use of certain online tools. One of these comes in the form of combined catalogues, which contain information about the collections of not just one library but several libraries. It is also useful to use metasearch engines*, which are capable of simultaneously searching for items in the collections of multiple libraries.
Metasearch engine
An application that submits a given search term or phrase to multiple search engines and/or databases and searches them all simultaneously. The metasearch engine displays the results in a list on its own interface, starting with the one it considers most relevant.
Differences between the two approaches to interlibrary searching
The combined catalogues build their own database from the catalogue records of the participating libraries, which contain descriptions of the bibliographic data of the documents. This allows users to find what they are looking for in a single database, as each record also contains information about the location of the given item.
One such catalogue is WorldCat.
The metasearch engines do not build their own databases. Instead, they query the databases of specific libraries to search in library collections but display the search results on a single interface of their own.
The Karlsruhe Virtual Catalog (KVK) is one such search interface, which performs searches mainly in the catalogues of libraries in German-speaking areas, while also providing an option to select a number of specific national libraries and even WorldCat to be queried.
In the following, the WorldCat and the KVK systems are discussed briefly.
WorldCat
WorldCat is the world’s largest library catalogue, with its own database of collections held in libraries and databases that are members of the WorldCat project. Like other catalogues, WorldCat, too, contains bibliographic records (i.e., descriptions of documents), with links to libraries around the world where each document is actually found.
In addition to printed books, journals, etc., the WorldCat catalogue also contains electronic documents, providing instant access to them in certain cases.
WorldCat comes with both a simple and an advanced search interface, which means that, similarly to other catalogues, it allows for highly specific search criteria to be specified.
In addition, users can create their own accounts to access additional features, such as:
- Select a preferred library
- Saving records in lists, adding notes
- Sharing lists
KVK: Karlsruhe Virtual Catalog
As a catalogue, the Karlsruhe Virtual Catalog (KVK) has been managed, since 1996, by KIT Library (KIT-Bibliothek), which is the library of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Karlsruhe Institut für Technologie). The main page of the library’s website comes equipped with a search bar for doing quick searches in the catalogue (with default settings). However, there is also a separate KVK site, which allows for the instant specification of search criteria.
It follows from the above that KVK is a metasearch engine, i.e., it does not rely on a database of its own but is capable of querying multiple databases simultaneously and displaying the corresponding results in lists.
KVK’s search interface allows for a few search criteria to be specified, which are considered the most basic ones, as it cannot offer more search options than the individual database.
Search results are displayed in short lists of titles that link to the original record displays for each system. Access information is therefore not included and can be found in the original descriptions.
KVK runs search queries in the systems selected by the user. Such systems may include the following:
- Catalogues in Germany, Austria, Switzerland
- National library catalogues worldwide
- Combined or virtual national catalogues
- WorldCat
For example Amazon
- DOAJ, DOAB
- Hathi Trust
- Internet Archive
- Google Books
In conclusion, the two types of systems discussed above help library users to specifically identify items and they also provide guidance on where and how to access items. However, to actually access an item, users either have be registered with the library holding the particular item, or they have to make a request for an interlibrary loan to get access to it through another library.
It is important to note that these systems help to find information in advance, but when submitting an inter-library request, it is not necessary to specify the location of the item found here, as librarians will search for it and choose the best solution.