No Direct or Indirect Commercial Advantage—As Applied to Fee-Based Document Delivery The direct or indirect commercial advantage prohibition means that a library loses section 108 protection if it profits from its document delivery service. The first step, then, is comparing how much it costs your library to make a copy with how much you charge. You may go beyond the obvious costs of paper and toner, and include all direct and indirect costs, such as equipment, supplies, and personnel.
An Association of Research Libraries (ARL) study from the late 1990s may help you determine if you are within this mandate.[1] In its report, the ARL noted that it cost research libraries, on average, $18.35 to borrow an item, and $9.48 to lend an item (the average cost for all libraries was $12.02 to borrow and $7.25 to lend). Costs obviously vary from one library to the next, and presumably are higher today.
We can hear some librarians saying, “We’re not making money on document delivery; the revenue we receive just enables us to enhance our collection.” Stop! If your document delivery activities enable you to “enhance your collection,” you are either making money from document delivery (which you cannot do), or you are not counting all of your expenses (which indeed may be the case).
There is no definitive answer as to how much you may charge, but for some guidance, we offer these university library document delivery hypotheticals.
Example 1
Freedonia State College has a base document delivery transaction charge of $5.00, plus $.25 per page.
- Comment: Freedonia State, then, charges $7.50 for a 10-page article, and $10.00 for a 20-page article. We doubt that the college is making any money from its document delivery services.
- ↑ Association of Research Libraries, Interlibrary Loan and Document Delivery (ILL/DD) Performance Measures Study, Executive Summar LL/DD Performance Measures Study (May 1998), available at http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/illdds.pdf.
