this icon has never been more apropos

[thedarlingone]

JESUS COCKWAFFLES

I went to check on my current library system's interlibrary loan policy, because clearly I don't have enough commitments without starting up Read All the Newberys again. ;P

They have a restriction against ILLing the same book twice in twelve months. O_O "You can't get via Interlibrary Loan: Books that you borrowed via Interlibrary Loan in the past year. You can only request a title once per year."

WHAT THE ACTUAL FLYING FUCKNUGGETS?! Who does that? What on earth is the possible rationale? I can understand "you can't have the US's sole library copy of some ancient book constantly on ILL" (although rare books are restricted separately), I could see something like a three-month restriction if there was simply too much volume, but a year?! What the kriff?

I mean, this doesn't interfere in any technical way with how Read All the Newberys works, but if shit comes up (as it so often does), I couldn't catch up on a missed book for a year? I just. What. WHATMST.

Comments

[pedanther]

The last time I tried to ILL a book, it got declined with the stated reason "This book is a catalogued as a young adult fiction and so cannot be loaned". I still haven't figured out what the line of causation is supposed to be there.

[thedarlingone]

...yeah, I've got nothing. O_O

[melannen]

Our automated ILL consortium lets each system define categories they will and won't automatically lend ILL, so it was probably just that (And you might have been able to get it from a different system.)

It's usually logical stuff like DVDs, magazines, special collections, and new bestellers that get restricted, though. YA is a new one on me.

[pedanther]

When you put it that way, maybe the source library's reasoning is something like "YA is hot right now, better hold onto it in case someone here wants it". And applying it to the whole category would explain how that reasoning got extended to a book that came out over 50 years ago.

[isis]

That's really weird! I wonder if my library system has similar restrictions.

[thedarlingone]

Every library system I've lived in has had different restrictions and methods, but this is one I hadn't encountered before.

[melannen]

I would say how reasonable it is depends on how the ILL system works? Mine has two different systems - the statewide one, which is all automatic, and has no restrictions, and the nationwide one, which requires our ILL people to negotiate personally with ILL staff at other libraries for a favor, and some of the other libraries will start saying no if they feel like we're making unreasonable requests. The nationwide also has the lending library set the due dates, so it could be anything from a one-week checkout to a five-month checkout on the first try.

If it's more like our nationwide system, and especially if you've had people (or even A Person) abuse it by returning books and then repeatedly placing them on hold again immediately, I can see them setting that kind of limit to stop this - it's not a matter of workload for your ILL staff, it's a matter of maintaining good relationships with the ILL staffs on the other end. And the books come and go library mail, so it might take two weeks from request being agreed to book arriving, and another two weeks to get back, on top of the checkout period, so even a three-month limit might still mean it spends almost no time at the lending library.

A year still seems kind of excessive, but I still suspect it has more to do with the ILL people not wanting other libraries to cut them off for too many requests.

[thedarlingone]

I figured there had to be some kind of background politics involved, but that seems like an... impressively terrible system :P

[melannen]

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.