[ILL-L] Requests for items your library already owns

[Campbell, Heather]

Last month, our customers requested 49 books (5.1% of all Borrowing
requests).  It's the second highest Borrowing cancellation reason the
first being the perennially  popular and vague Other.  Some of these are
customers who are trying to borrow copies of books that we only have in
our Special Collections area or in Reference. One of our Special
Collections is our new African-American Collection.  Initially, we were
told that as books were ordered for the collection, copies would be
ordered for circulating collections. This was not the case. So, as we
get requests for titles in this collection through ILL Lending, I look
up the ordering info and give it to our Non-Fiction department for
Catch-Up ordering.  

Is there a solution?  Apart from having our staff members scrutinize and
input all ILL requests, no.  The staff makes sure these don't get
requested because the software stops requests for items we own from
getting out into OCLC-dom and the customers get a standard e-mail or
phone call. We have ILLiad and customers can make requests using the
Customer Interface. We make it clear on our website and in our brochures
that ILL is for materials that JPL doesn't own.  Since I came to ILL in
Dec '03, we've had two intensive training programs that played out over
three months each time that everyone who does reference work had to take
AND we were included in orientation training for Library Associate
Seniors and a training session with Talking Books and the Center for
Adult Learning.  I'm working on an online training module concentrating
on how to request materials through ILL.  Even with all that, I know
there are staff members that just won't "get it".  And I know that there
are members of the public who think that borrowing something from
another library is the same as one of our library branches borrowing
from another of our branches to fill a customer hold request.

Heather
Heather Campbell, Senior Librarian  heatherc at coj.net;ill at coj.net
Special Services ~ (OCLC Symbol JPL)
Jacksonville (FL) Public Library
 	 	
"Books to the ceiling, books to the sky. My piles of books are a mile
high. How I love them! How I need them! I'll have a long beard by the
time I read them." ~Arnold Lobel

-----Original Message-----
From: ill-l-bounces at webjunction.org
[mailto:ill-l-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Bryant, Robert
Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2007 4:15 PM
To: vincentiw at mail.montclair.edu; Interlibrary Loan Listserv
Subject: RE: [ILL-L] Requests for items your library already owns

Yes Bill, I believe that our rate is about 15%;
the sad thing about it, is that this is not included in the statistics
to our Director here.  So, I suspect that the bosses do not
appreciate that 15% or so of handling borrowing requests...
Ed Bryant
Interlibrary Loan
OCU Dulaney-Browne Library
Oklahoma City University
OSZ


-----Original Message-----
From: ill-l-bounces at webjunction.org
[mailto:ill-l-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of William Vincenti
Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2007 2:48 PM
To: ILL-L
Subject: [ILL-L] Requests for items your library already owns

20-25% of the requests our ILL Department receives are for items that we

already own and responding to the patrons submitting the requests is 
taking up quite a bit of time that could be used more productively 
elsewhere.  The last I read in the literature this was a fairly common 
problem.  Have there been any discussions lately about solutions?

On the technical side of things we're starting to explore filtering the 
ILL form through our link resolver to use that as a way to make it more 
clear to the patron whether we own it or not. 

-Bill

-- 
William Vincenti
Reference Librarian
Harry A. Sprague Library
Montclair State University
Ph: 973-655-7147
Fx: 973-655-7780
Email:  vincentiw at mail.montclair.edu

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