Our automated statewide system (that includes every library in it agreeing that they will never say "no") means that we almost never have to fall back on the "call around" system except for legitimately rare books, but it looks like your state doesn't have any equivalent of that and relies entirely on the OCLC "call around and ask" system. :(
It makes sense for things like "are you willing to lend us your copy of the Latin Necronomicon if we swear to you on the five true names of Dagon, you know our system is trustworthy, the liber paginarum fulvarum came back undamaged didn't it?" or equivalent. And we also get a lot of things like very old children's books from tiny rural libraries that never get rid of dated books because they have no budget, and I think those librarians just like having someone to talk to.
But if we had to handle all the day-to-day requests like "we need book 6 of this popular ongoing series which we're inexplicably out of" or "I want everything ever written by this obscure romance author" or whatever without the automated statewide system, it would be awful.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2019-06-06 08:25 pm (UTC)It makes sense for things like "are you willing to lend us your copy of the Latin Necronomicon if we swear to you on the five true names of Dagon, you know our system is trustworthy, the liber paginarum fulvarum came back undamaged didn't it?" or equivalent. And we also get a lot of things like very old children's books from tiny rural libraries that never get rid of dated books because they have no budget, and I think those librarians just like having someone to talk to.
But if we had to handle all the day-to-day requests like "we need book 6 of this popular ongoing series which we're inexplicably out of" or "I want everything ever written by this obscure romance author" or whatever without the automated statewide system, it would be awful.