The University of California Libraries: A Plan for Development (1977)

VI. Delivery and Use 89
The allocation to the Los Angeles campus for bus service provides
that campus's portion of the costs of a cooperative program for
sharing resources between UCLA, the California Institute of Technology,
and the University of Southern California. The allocation to
Berkeley is for a new jitney service from Berkeley to Davis which has
proven very successful. It started in January of 1976, and is already
being used by Berkeley campus members who need to use the Davis
library, or have other business in Davis, and by the Berkeley library
to borrow materials from Davis. A surprising result has been that
the Berkeley campus now borrows about as much material from Davis as
vice versa, and the time to obtain materials has been drastically
reduced. An important benefit to library users is that if they require
more time than the jitney in one direction allows, they may
stay overnight and take the other jitney back to their home campus.
The jitney service has freed intercampus lending from dependence
on the U.S. mails, and has reduced the time required for transporting
materials between campuses from several days to one. A study by
Thompson in 1975, however, indicated that there are several other
sources of delay in delivering materials between campuses, all of
which prevent effective sharing of resources. In the Northern
region, Thompson found that even with the use of jitneys, the average
elapsed time for delivery of material from Berkeley to the other
Northern campuses was 10.4 calendar days and 11.4 calendar days if a
photocopy was required or desired. From the other Northern campuses
to Berkeley, the time was similar: 11.5 days, and 11.2 days with
photocopying. 10 The sources of delay were found to be in at least
five areas: transmission of requests; receiving requests and checking
them; paging and retrieving the materials; and preparing the
materials for shipment to the requesting campuses. His conclusions
10 Donald D.Thompson, Interlibrary Lending and Intercampus
Photocopy: A Study of User Demand and Systems Response Among
Northern University of California us Campuses, Berkeley, University
of California, 1975, pp. 4-5.