From Minitex and OCLC: Most requested interlibrary loan titles for 2016

The top 10 ILL’d titles for 2016

(Shown in order, 1-10. Click to see the book in WorldCat)

Hillbilly ElegymebeforeyoucoverwhenbreathbecomesairamancalledoveGirl on the train

nightengaleBetween the world and meAll the lightamerica2020crackingthecode

ILL reflects the political events of the tumultuous 2016 election season

If you recall from last year’s post, we looked at six years’ worth of data, from 2010 to 2015, and identified four trends. Adding 2016 to the mix didn’t change anything very much, except for one notable observation. Not surprisingly, the top 2016 ILL theme was how closely aligned ILL was with current events. Two of the top ten books requested were political books that reflected what was taking place in the news and popular culture—the US presidential race.* Hillbilly Elegy was published in June 2016 and by the end of July, it had rocketed to the 12th most-requested monograph on the OCLC ILL system. By August, it was firmly entrenched in first place and remains there to this day. America 2020: The Survival Blueprint debuted among top ten titles in May and remained there until after the November election.

Other than that, here is what we observed:

  • Repeats from 2015. Three books from the 2015 most-borrowed list found their way onto the 2016 list—The Girl on the Train, Between the World and Me and All the Light We Cannot See. What titles will repeat in 2017?
  • More movie tie-ins. There were three movie tie-ins in the 2016 list, which seems to be a recurring trend every year. In fact, the movie based on The Girl on the Train, which made the list for the second year in a row, was released in October. What movie tie-ins will be there next year?
  • No self-published titles. There were two in 2015 but no self-published titles in 2016. Will this continue?
  • No YA titles. This was a surprise, since at least two young adult titles had been on the list for several years. Last year we wondered if more adults were requesting YA titles or if younger people were discovering ILL. Is this the start of a new, downward trend for YA titles?
  • Same fiction/nonfiction mix. Six fiction and four nonfiction titles were on the 2016 list, just the same as 2015.

This year, we also looked at the top ILL titles by library type. What we found is what you might expect. Medical and law libraries borrowed medical and law-related books, while corporate, government and theological libraries borrowed business, governing and religious materials. Below are the top ILL titles by library type.

More interesting numbers for you to ponder

Is your ILL statistic appetite still wanting? Well, here are few more numbers to satisfy your fix!

  • More than 10,000 libraries subscribe to OCLC resource sharing services.
  • Every 18 seconds, a library fills an interlibrary loan request.
  • More than 7,300 libraries requested at least one item using ILL, and 7,500 libraries loaned at least one item in 2016.
  • More than 1 million articles were shared online using OCLC’s Article Exchange.