Libraries have lent and borrowed books from the 8th century to the present, including monasteries. Teresa Miguel-Stearns, director of the Yale Law School’s Law Library, notes that in 1212, the Council of Paris “encouraged monks to establish a separate collection of books within the monastery for loan to members of their communities. This was considered an important showing of mercy to the poor.”
These regional lending systems were based on agreements, and often subject to the whims of those in power. Nicolas Claude Fabri de Peiresc, an influential 17th-century French researcher and astronomer known for his ability in collecting rare texts, attempted to “establish a kind of interlibrary loan system between the Royal Library in Paris and the Vatican and Barberini libraries in Rome”—according to historian Francis W. Gravit. For stubborn bureaucratic reasons, it never happened.
Librarians wished it would. Samuel S. Green, the librarian of the Worcester Public Library in Massachusetts, wrote on September 4, 1876 to the Library Journal: “It would add greatly to the usefulness of our reference libraries if an agreement should be made to lend books to each other for short periods of time.” Green’s request was met with skepticism. Basil Stuart-Stubbs, former university librarian at the University of British Columbia, notes that the Boston Public Library “loaned books to other libraries in New England during the 1890s”—but nothing close to a national service existed.
Then Joseph C. Rowell, Cal-Berkeley’s first full-time university librarian, said “the growing demands of scholars, incapable of satisfaction by any one library, and the economical management of library finances, unitedly prompt a closer relation, a vital union, between the larger libraries of our country.” His InterLibrary Loan system started as a relationship between the University of California campuses and other libraries, and his stipulations in the late 1890s have remained fairly standard practice to this day: borrowing libraries are responsible for securing and returning books, and must pay for the item’s delivery and return; librarians must keep detailed records of patron receipt and usage (those white bands), and rare or frequently used texts “may be loaned only at the discretion of the librarian.”
Although it has evolved since Rowell’s early days, InterLibrary Loan continues to be an essential resource—even in the digital era. It is comforting to delude ourselves that everything is available online, but there’s a wealth of significant material that remains only in print. The Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), which maintains WorldCat, reported 280 million ILL requests since the organization began in 1967, including 6.9 million in 2018 alone. Last year’s top-requested titles included books by Tara Westover, Jordan Peterson, and Celeste Ng.