Impacts on Research and Libraries if International ILL Practices Are Modified The Interlibrary Loan Code for the US states, “Interlibrary loan transactions with libraries outside of the United States are governed by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions’ International Lending: Principles and Guidelines for Procedure.”6 The IFLA guidelines state that “each country has a special responsibility to supply its own national imprints to libraries in other countries” in order to promote “universal availability of published material.”7 The guidelines stipulate that “all reasonable efforts should be made to satisfy international requests,” but also affirm the importance of respect for copyright, indicating that “each supplying library should be aware of, and work within, the copyright laws of its own country” and that “the requesting library should pay due regard to the copyright laws of the supplying library’s country.”8 Current practice allows research libraries to fulfill their “special responsi- bility” to promote “universal availability of published material.” Changes to these practices in the US could limit scholarship while imposing new costs on libraries and their institutions. Changes that would require US research libraries to provide special handling for international requests would have a negative impact on ILL operations, are unnecessary, and would not be cost-effective. Although mechanisms do not exist for supplying libraries to track inter- national lending requests, requesting libraries throughout the world have tools through which they can pay rights holders for copies. For example, the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) collects approximately US$39.4 million in rights payments annually from international sources.9 Libraries already devote considerable effort and expense to ensuring compliance with copyright laws. If additional requirements for fulfilling international ILL requests were imposed, it would place new burdens on research libraries with regards to workflow and costs. Although guidelines issued by the Commission on New Technological Uses of Copyrighted Works (CONTU) do not have the full force of law, these guidelines have become the de facto practice for US libraries. These guidelines place the burden for paying copyright fees on the requesting libraries, and it would be both undesirable and impractical to transfer responsibility for ensuring compliance to supplying libraries for only international requests. Libraries not only respect and voluntarily pay copyright fees when appropriate, but they also constitute the bulk of the market for the content RLI 275 11 White Paper: International Interlibrary Loan ( C O N T I N U E D ) JUNE 2011 RESEARCH LIBRARY ISSUES: A QUARTERLY REPORT FROM ARL, CNI, AND SPARC