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.