Washington, DC—At the spring 2011 meeting of the Association of Research Libraries, the ARL Board of Directors affirmed that it is the right of North American research libraries to participate in international interlibrary loan (ILL) and document delivery activities.

Over the past year, questions have been raised concerning the current ILL practices of some US research libraries. In particular, the focus is on the delivery of resources from US libraries to non–US libraries. US copyright law supports the ability of domestic libraries to participate in ILL arrangements and to send copies of copyrighted works to foreign libraries provided the libraries meet the requirements of the law.

The ARL Task Force Report on International Interlibrary Loan and Document Delivery Practices is available in the June issue of Research Library Issues ( RLI ) .

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit organization of 126 research libraries in the US and Canada. Its mission is to influence the changing environment of scholarly communication and the public policies that affect research libraries and the diverse communities they serve. ARL pursues this mission by advancing the goals of its member research libraries, providing leadership in public and information policy to the scholarly and higher education communities, fostering the exchange of ideas and expertise, facilitating the emergence of new roles for research libraries, and shaping a future environment that leverages its interests with those of allied organizations. ARL is on the web at http://www.arl.org/ .

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