Hi, all.

I occasionally see an article in our professional literature about how well ILL article request data does (not) reflect likely demand, and that definitely seems to reflect our own experience from my somewhat informal analysis of our own data.

But I seem to have trouble persuading my colleagues here about this.

For example, I'll present JR2 turnaway data and "abstracts viewed" in EBSCO and Proquest as evidence for adding a subscription, but they'll respond that :"if they didn't bother to ILL it, then they don't really need it".

Has anyone done, either for publication or for internal use that you can share with me, some kind of "systematic review" on this issue?

Or even if you have a clear and concise explanation of why that "they didn't bother" reasoning is not an appropriate conclusion to draw, I would appreciate that too. I haven't found the right way to articulate why I think that's wrong.

Or if you agree with my colleagues, tell me that too!