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Alphabetical Order as a Defect in the Creation of OCLCLender StringsSteven W. Sowards M:LS aa Humanities Librarian, McCabe Library, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA 19081Published online: 22 Oct 2008.

To cite this article: Steven W. Sowards M:LS (1991) Alphabetical Order as a Defect in the Creation of OCLC Lender Strings,Journal of Interlibrary Loan & Information Supply, 1:4, 53-69, DOI: 10.1300/J472v01n04_06

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J472v01n04_06

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. The OCLC interlibrary loan subsystem allows ILL workers to direct borrowing requests to target libraries in a specified order. Study of a sample of lender strings taken from interlibrary loan requests submitted on OCLC to two liberal arts college libraries shows a tendency by ILL workers to select and enter lending library symbols in alphabetical order. This tendency, while inadvertent, nevertheless can create an unfair burden for libraries with certain symbols and works against the most equitable distribution of ILL requests among libraries. For the good of the ILL system, ILL work- ers need to avoid this error.

As the 1990s open in an atmosphere of fiscal constraint, resource sharing among libraries takes on greater importance as a solution to problems of price increases, serials proliferation, and budget re-

esource sharing, above all else, means interlibrary han ever before the ILL system needs to function as

A workable ILL system involves an uneasy balance between two concepts: reciprocity and equal access. Everyone wants a "fair"

system, but what is fair in terms of recip radicts what is fair in terms of equal access.

the problem with clarity nearly twenty years ago:

Steven W. Sowards, MLS, is Humanities Librarian, McCabe Library, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA 19081.

Journal of Interlibrary Loan & Information Supply, Vol. l(4) 1991 O 1991 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved. 53

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54 JOURNAL OF INTERLIBRARY LOAN &

. . . although books may physically be the chattel of the insti- tution that bought and paid for them, they belong intellectually to the general cultural heritage of mankind and ought some- how to be made available to all men . . . the lending library's equity in its books was presumably protected by the reciprocal nature of the practice itself. After all, as many books were borrowed as were lent.

eciprocity, however, functions effectively as a balancing factor only in the broad middle range of libraries that borrow and lend at roughly the same rates. At one end of the scale there are many small libraries that can be only borrowers, while at the opposite end there are a number of libraries . . . that lend very many more books than they borrow. Thus the resources of the latter institutions go to subsidize the sys- tem for the benefit of the former.'

Continuing his remarks, Kaser writes of a "service" which is "equitably paid" or "free" on the one hand, but also warns about "costs," "inequity," "imbalance" and "b~rden."~ The ILL guidelines endorsed by the Reference and Adult Services Division of the American Library Association also note both the responsibil- ity of each library to offer open ILL service "to all members of the library's clientele," and an awareness that "the effectiveness of a national system of interlibrary lending is directly related to the equi- table distribution of costs9' which requires "an appropriate balance between resource sharing and responsibility . . ."" for the prosperous few (the lenders), fairness for the needing many (the borrowers) will not be sustained.

ifficulties arise as arians translate theory into practice. The ter the volume of activity, the greater the risk that defects

in the system will lead to problems. e note that OCLC's ubsystem processed its 29 millionth ILL request in the fall of , only eleven years after its introduction in 1979, and that only

57 days were required to move from the 28 millionth request to the 29 millionth, we gain some sense of the increased volume of current

activity, an increase which is a~celerating.~ Under such condi- tions, even small and inadvertent deviations from our intended practices can quickly cause trouble. For example, a distortion in the

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Steven W. Sowards 55

system which adds just one request per working day to a lender's list of borrowing requests would produce several hundred additional transactions in a year, and add thousands of dollars in potential costs.S Given the stakes, attention to detail is worthwhile for the sake of both individual institutions and the I system nationwide.

The OCLC ILL subsystem, which made ILL service faster and more widely available, unfortunately includes structural features which can work against an equitable distribution of the lending bur- den. Examination of the lender strings in samples of ILL requests received by two liberal arts college libraries indicates an inadvertent but cumulative distortion in the distribution of lenders based on a natural tendency among ILL workers to read their monitors in the usual left to right order. Combined with the alphabetical order em- ployed in OCLC lender library displays, this human error intro- duces noticeable movement away from the fairest distribution of requests among eligible lenders.

An understanding of the problem requires a brief description of borrowing on the OCLC system. The OCLC interlibrary loan ule automates several tasks. Specifically, the operator of an

orkstation using a microcomputer and monitor:

1. searches for and identifies the correct bibliographic record for a requested book or serial;

2. identifies libraries in the state, in adjacent states, or system- wide which report owning the desired item;

3. selects up to five potential lenders from a display of three letter codes ("symbols") organized by state;

4. directs an electronic borrowing request to the five libraries in order; and

5. keeps track of due dates and the shipping status of the loaned materials.

During Step Three the I operator must select specific potential lenders. The interaction of human decision-making with the OCLC system at this point introduces room for error, or more accurately, inattention from which errors flow.

For each bibliographic record, the operator can "display hold- ings" at institutions in the borrower's own state, in a region made

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56 JOURNAL OF INTERLIBRARY LOAN & INFORMA TION SUPPLY

up of that state and those adjacent to it, or system-wide. In multi- state displays, the monitor provides lists of libra state by state, as a series of three letter codes lines for each state, these library codes appear i Figure 1 is a typical display.

From these lists, the operator selects up to five symbols for entry as a "lender string9' controlling electronic transmission of the re- quest to the designated libraries in the order specified. In a minority of cases, less than five symbols may be entered. For example, a scarce item may be held by fewer than five accessible libraries. A number of busy, large institutions require double entry of their sym- bol in the lender string, a device which extends the length of time during which the request will remain active on their terminal. In the majority of cases, however, an ILL lender string will include five different symbols.

Examination of lender strings provides insight into the decision- making process employed by ILL workers at borr sample made up of two groups of lender strings this study. The first group consists of one hundred consecutive bor- rowing requests routed to Wanover College in Indiana during the fall and winter of 1987-88. The second is made up of one hundred requests received by Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania in the fall of 1990. Requests in which the lender string contained fewer than five codes, or in which codes were repeated, were excluded: the Indiana sample 35 requests were dropped, and from the sylvania sample 45 requests. Except for these exclusions, consecu- tive requests were used in the samples. Each group of one hundred requests included 500 selected lender symbols.

At a descriptive level, the samples offer some information about the concentration of ILL requests among particular institutions and within regions. The one hundred ILL requests directed to Wanover College came from sixty-one (61) different libraries or institutions. The geographic origin of the requests was not distributed uni- formly. Twenty-three of these libraries were located in the state of Indiana, with 18 other states represented. The 23 Indiana libraries (37.7% of the total) accounted for 57% of the requests submitted, and libraries in four adjacent states accounted for another 24%. The OCLC symbol display groups adjacent states into a "region," and

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Figure 1: Sample display of OCLC holding libraries symbols

REGIONAL LOCATIONS - FOR OTHER HOLDINGS DISPLAYS ENTER dh[group],

dhs, dha, OR dh, DISPLAY RECD, SEND; FOR BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD ENTER

bib, DISPLAY RECD, SEND

STATE LOCATIONS

DE DLM

MD MDB UMC W S

NJ NJR

NY BNG BUF NAM nyp RRR VHB XQM YSM ZGM ZXC

OH BGU CIN CLE CXP JCU OCP OSU OUN TOL WSU YNG

PA LAS PBU PIT PLF PMC TEU UPM

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58 JOURNAL OF INTERLIBRARY LOAN & INFORMATION SUPPLY

operator use of this feature is reflected in the concentration of over 80% of the potential borrowers in Indiana's

The one hundred ILL requests directed to Swarthmore College came from fifty-five (55) different libraries or institutions. Thirty- seven of these libraries were located in the with 11 other states represented. The 37 (67.3% of the total) accounted for 80% of the requests submitted, and libraries in five adjacent states accounted for another 13%. The regional focus of ILL activity is again pronounced, encompassing over 90% of the Swarthmore requests.

The 61 libraries submitting requests to anover College included 31 academic libraries, 23 public libraries, and 7 special libraries. The academic libraries, which amounted to 50.8% of the total num- ber of borrowers, accounted for 52% of the requests; the 23 public libraries (37.7% of the total) accounted for 41% of the requests; and the seven special libraries (11.5% of the total) accounted for 7% of the requests.

The 55 libraries seeking loans from arthmore College con- sisted of 45 academic libraries, 9 public libraries, and 1 special library. The academic libraries, which made up 81.8% of the total, accounted for 86% of the requests; the 9 public libraries (16.4% of the total) accounted for 13% of the requests; and the single special library (1.8% of the total) accounted for 1% of the requests.

The distribution of requests among the borrowing libraries was not uniform. In each sample, just less than a quarter of the borrow-

accounted for slightly over half of the requests tabulated. At nover, 15 of the 61 libraries made 51 of the 100 requests. At

warthmore, 13 of the 55 libraries made 51 of the 100 requests. None of these findings are surprising or inappropriate: the ten-

dency toward regional borrowing, for example, is in accord with both the Interlibrary Loan Code and common sense. OCLC is to be congratulated for the ease with which the ILL subsystem supports regional borrowing. It is at the next level of selection that structural features of the system introduce problems: the choice of individu,al

tial lending libraries, especially within single states. hen selecting likely lenders, the ILL worker's experience and

insights play a crucial role in identifying reliable libraries to fill the ILL request promptly. Ideally, an experienced operator weighs four

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Steven W. Sowards 59

factors in choosing which five library codes to enter, and their or- der:

1. accurate identification of lenders from the bibliographic record and attached holdings screens;

2. estimation of the time needed to fill the request, based on the distance between borrower and lender, the size of the potential lending library (which can affect its internal handling of the request), and past experience with the lender or the lender's reputation;

3. the cost, if any, for the loan; and 4. institutional ties, formal or informal, which may affect the de-

livery of the borrowed item: for example, the presence of co- operative delivery systems.

In weighing each of these factors, the operator makes a conscious judgment. Ideally, the same judgment comes into play five times in making up a complete lender string.

In practice, however, a fifth factor is at work during the selection of the second through fifth library codes. In the initial choice, the operator addresses her or his attention to a full array of lender sym- bols. As soon as one symbol has been selected, however, the opera- tor's eye is drawn to a particular point on the screen. Our learned habit of reading from left to right then comes into play: the opera- tor's attention tends to follow the display of symbols in alphabetical order within a given line. To the extent that the operator selects a lender symbol on the basis of the alphabetical order display on the monitor, rather than conscious factors, imbalance enters the ILL system.

An examination of the two samples of lender strings shows the degree to which this inadvertent tendency to select symbols in al- phabetical order is present. In creasing the two hundred lender strings in the samples, the ILL operators made five choices each time. To begin, the operator picked a symbol from the whole dis- play. In the remaining cases, four for each of two hundred in- stances, choice proceeded from the point of last selection, and in these eight hundred cases the error of alphabetical order selection is possible.

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60 JOURNAL OF INTERLIBRARY LOAN &

Under ideal circumstances, judgment based on objective factors would lead to an effectively random motion of selection, right and left, within a display of lender symbols. ith the simplified display of choices:

for example, the operator might select and arrange the symbols in this order:

In this case, selection moves from left to right twice (C to A, D to ), and also from right to left twice (A to

betical order plays a role, however, there will be a tendency toward lender strings such as:

hile this avoids the obviously inappropriate "A three times as many left to right motions (

as the reverse (E to A). Tables 1 and 2 indicate the number of times, and the percentage

of times, in which real operators chose each of the three available options for selection in the 800 sample instances:

1. a jump to the display of symbols for a different state; 2. within a state, selection of a symbol to the left of the starting

point by a right to left motion (against alphabetical order); or 3. within a state, selection of a symbol to the right of the starting

point by a left to right motion (in alphabetical order). The results are shown for the total sample and broken down by the type of borrowing library.

Left to right choices are most common, except among special li- braries, which may be seeking unusual materials.

The proportion of alphabetical order selections is more apparent if changes of state are removed from consideration. Table 3 shows the number of decisions when ILL operators in each type of library

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Table 1: Choices among lender symbols

Change of Right to Left to

Full 800 214 sample

Public 216 libraries

Special 32 libraries

Academic 552 libraries

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Table 2: Choices among lender symbols a s a percentage

Change of Right t o Left t o

Ful l 800 26.8% 26.4% 46.8% sample

Public 216 28.7 19.0 52.3 l i b r a r i e s

Special 32 5 3 . 1 l i b r a r i e s

Academic 552 24.5 30.2 45.3 l i b r a r i e s

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Steven W. Sowards 63

Table 3 : Choices among symbols w i t h i n a s i n g l e s t a t e

Right t o Left t o

Fu l l sample 5 8 6 2 1 1 3 7 5

Academic l i b r a r i e s 417 167 250

Public l i b r a r i e s 154 4 1 1 1 3

Special l i b r a r i e s 1 5 3 1 2

remained in the same state when deciding which lender code to select next. Table 4 shows the same information, in percentages.

Under ideal conditions, in which lender symbols were picked solely on the basis of collection strength, cost, anticipated response time, and institutional ties, one would predict that an equal number of choices would fall to the left and to the right in a typical lender string. The frequency of both right to left and left to right motion would be 50%.

As Table 4 shows, the actual choices made by operators, overall and for each kind of library, deviate from the predicted figure in the direction of alphabetical order, left to right motion. For academic libraries as a group, the deviation is relatively small, of 60.0%. For public libraries, the figure reaches 73.4% in favor of alphabetical order motion, and hits 80.0% for special libraries. Clearly, there is an impact on the construction of lender strings when operators temporarily lapse into habitual left to right motions while selecting symbols.

The cumulative impact of this behavior on the equitable distribu- tion of requests to libraries may not be immediately obvious. A thought experiment can illustrate the potential degree of distortion caused by left to right selection.

Imagine a state with 101 libraries which participate in the OCLC

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T a b l e 4 : C h o i c e s among s y m b o l s w i t h i n a s ing le s ta te as a p e r c e n t a g e

R i g h t t o L e f t t o

F u l l sample 5 8 6

A c a d e m i c l ib rar ies 417 4 0 . 0 6 0 . 0 5 0 . 0

P u b l i c l ibrar ies 2 1 6 2 6 . 6 7 3 . 4 5 0 . 0

S p e c i a l l ib ra r ies 3 2 2 0 . 0 8 0 . 0 5 0 . 0

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Steven W. Sowards 65

interlibrary loan system. uppose that these 101 libraries own equivalent collections, so at there is no significant difference in directing requests among them. Then suppose that 101 ILL requests are submitted: these will be distributed uniformly among the li- braries, so that each library is named as the first symbol on one of

t this point the burden of ILL service is uniformly at happens if we suppose that the ILL operators sub-

mitting the requests always select symbols only in alphabetical, left to right order as they complete their lender strings? For the sake of simplicity, let us confine the experiment to the selection of the sec- ond symbol, although a similar process would take place at each

hen the second symbol is picked for each of the 101 lender str~ngs, all libraries with symbols to the left of the originally se- lected code (that is, libraries whose OCLC symbol is earlier in terms of alphabetical order) will be excluded from further consider- ation. For Request #1, directed to the first library (Library #I), each of the 100 remaining potential lenders (Libraries #2 to #101) is equally likely to be selected, with a probability of 1 in 100 (.01) for each one. For Request #2, directed to Library #2, Library #1 is excluded from consideration; only Libraries #3 through #101, numbering 99 in all, will be considered. Thus the chance of selec- tion as the second code in Request #2's lender string rises to 1 in 99 for each of these institutions, and this is in addition to the original 1 in 100 chance for Request #l. The process continues, with incre- mental increases in the odds for each successive instance, until with Request #loo, directed to Library #loo, only Library #I01 re- mains available: it is certain that Library #I01 will be the second symbol in the lender string for Request 100. At the same time, the cumulative total of chances incurred has also reached a high level for Library #I01 and other institutions which appear late in the alphabetical display. might consider all oft be equally eligible lenders; we can thus assign a factor of .O1 to each library for this request.

The accumulation of chances can be displayed in abbreviated tab- ular form, with only the extreme cases filled in, but with the other results considered as cumulative factors as seen in Table 5.

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Table 5 . Cumulative chances of ILL symbol s e l e c t i o n as t h e second

lender i n t h e s t r i n g

Library Number Request #1 #2 #3 #4 #5 . . . #97 #98 #99 #lo0 #lo1 Number #1 0 1/100 1/100 1/100 1/100 1/100 1/100 1/100 1/100 1/100

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Approximate cumulative value . 0 1 .02 .03 .04 .05 3.20 3.45 3 .79 4.29 5.29 of fractions

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68 JOURNAL OF INTERLIBRARY LOAN &

ill be the first lender contacted for ill almost never find itself appearing as the second lender sought any other request, with a cumulative chance of only .O1 (1 in

the other hand, besides bei 101, is certain to be

, and the accumulation of chances from all the requests reaches a figure of 5.29 for its overall likeli- hood of being called upon as the second lender. This figure is hun- dreds of times larger than the cumulative total for libraries listed early in the display: in ten thousand requests, be listed second 529 times, as opposed to only

In the world of the thought experiment, equitable distribution of the lending burden is obviously jeopardized by the operation of left to right symbol selection. Libraries with the bad luck to have sym- bols which appear late in the sequence will face significantly higher chances of ILL requests than those early in the display, for reasons having nothing to do with collection strength, reputation, or other rational judgments.

In the real world, the i of this phenomenon is less pro- nounced, but still at work. ILL requests are not filled by the first library to which they cted: in these cases, the impact of alphabetical order symbol collection can come into play, as found in the samples.

m has not gone u The Indiana Coopera- ervices Authority ), for example, offered

this suggestion in 1988:

Do put symbols from the end of the alphabet at the beginning of your lender string sometimes. Otherwise libraries with sym- bols in the first part of the alphabet receive more requests than libraries with symbols at the end of the alphabet. The more libraries that always select lenders in alphabetical order, the more serious the problem become^.^

uch advice needs to be more widely heeded, and the problem more widely publicized. Deliberate efforts by ILL workers to mix the order of their selections, or even to select consciously in reverse alphabetical order to offset inadvertent errors, could seriously re-

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Steven W. Sowards 69

id Kaser, "Whither Interlibrary Loan?" College and Research Li-

ary Loan Code for Regional, State, Local, or Other Spe- cial Groups of Libraries" and "National Interlibrary Loan Code, 1980," re-

s in Virginia Boucher, Interlibrary Loan Practices Hand-

onth ILL," OCLC News No. 188 (Nov.1

remain elusive, a Texas State Library for 1984: "Texas Interloan Cost: $11.25; Journal 108 (1983): 2006. Assuming a have reached $15 by 1990.

tring," INCOLSAIOCLC Interlibra ry Loan

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