Interlibrary loan in Türkiye: interlibrary loan tracking system (KITS)

Abstract

Purpose This study aims to evaluate the current situation of the interlibrary loan in Türkiye using interlibrary loan tracking system raw data (2008–2019). Data was analyzed geographically to reveal the effect of geographical distance on the collaboration and thematically to identify the prominent areas/topics in the requests. In addition, the requests were evaluated in terms of the type and age of the university, the size of the collection and the number of library users. Design/methodology/approach The effect of geographical distance on the collaboration was revealed using VOSviewer. The place numbers and titles of the requests were used for thematic analysis, which was performed using Flourish and VOSviewer. Statistical tests were conducted with SPSS to investigate the effects of factors such as university age and type. Findings Geographic analysis revealed that the prominent regions are Marmara, Central Anatolia and Aegean Regions, respectively. The fact that these regions host Türkiye’s largest cities with the highest number of universities has been effective in achieving this result. The results of the thematic analysis are in accordance with the literature. Almost half of the requests are from Social Sciences, Language and Literature, History and Law. While the effects of collection size and the number of library users have relatively insignificant effects on requests, age and university type were found to be more relevant. Originality/value Interlibrary loan data of this size has not been the subject of an evaluation before in Türkiye. Hence, the results obtained have the potential to influence relevant policies and decisions on the subject. On the other hand, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, bibliographic mapping was used for the first time on interlibrary loan data.