Productivity must be evaluated in conjunction with our goals and service quality. In ILL, goals such as high fill rates, fast turnaround time, user satisfaction, legible photocopy quality, and accuracy are very important. Statistics may prove that we are highly productive, that we do a lot of work with few resources, but if we send the wrong book or deliver the article long after the patron no longer needs it, we have not met the goals of our operation. Reaching the highest level of productivity possible while still maintaining high service levels should be the desired goal. Determining what the optimal productivity level is is not an easy task and may take considerable experimentation and study.
Some data is available.
She compared staffing and workload in interlibrary loan, using the staff to transaction ratio as a measure of efficiency or productivity. The Texas State Library also uses the staff to transaction ratio as a measure of productivity in the ten major resource centers in Texas. Data collected annually by TexNet show that the staff to transaction ratio is steadily increasing. By 1995, this had jumped to 10,317. ILL transactions in public libraries may differ from those in academic libraries, since requests are primarily for books and include referrals from many small public libraries.