[ILL-L] RE: conditionals, deflections, etc (was policy problem)

[Julia Graham]

At 05:08 AM 10/2/2007, you wrote:
>My experience with Conditionals has been a bit different.  We saw a
>decrease in requests for new books after we started conditionaling them-
>under the Other category with a note asking them to decline the
>conditional. I know that these conditionals get read because every few
>months or so we get contacted by a borrower.

Agreed.  You *can* put your own sort of conditional messages in, at 
least in ILLiad, using the Customization manager.  I believe you 
cannot alter the Unfilleds, as Margaret stated, due to ISO protocols, 
but I know for a fact that we've added some custom conditionals, and 
based on the responses we get back, the lender is able to read what 
our special condition is.


>I still maintain that if we could deflect by publication date, that
>would go a long way toward solving the problem.  As it is- even though
>we have that we don't loan new books in our policy statement, it still
>counts against us in our fill rate.

I'd LOVE IT, LOVE IT if libraries would do this for current year 
imprints (a large well-known academic institution in California comes 
to mind - they not only don't loan current year, but they don't loan 
the PREVIOUS current year either <2006, for example>).  But we don't 
go to them often enough for me to retain that information in my three 
remaining brain cells.
Like others, I do not have the time to go through every policy to see 
who loans current years and who doesn't (for what it's worth, if we 
have *just* catalogued an item and it's on shelf, we do loan it on 
ILL!).  I do have a custom holdings set up for "current year" for 
books, but I'm sure it doesn't include all libraries that loan 
current year imprints.  And some public libraries (for obvious 
reasons) can loan, say, 2007 imprints, as long as it came out more 
than 6 months ago.  Try writing a custom holding for *that*. ;-)

Oh, how I wish that all the nifty features that are available on OCLC 
were actually used by all the libraries that use OCLC.  Of course, I 
also wish to win the lotto...

Oh, and just as one last aside, don't think that OCLC doesn't listen 
to what you (or I) say.  Some time ago, another listmember and I were 
kvetching out loud on the list about a beef we had, and we were just 
emailed by OCLC on Monday to say that they are making this change 
based on feedback they've received on the ILL and ILLiad 
listserv.  So they can make changes.  You just gotta tell 'em. :-)

Okay, back to work.

Julia

>Heather Campbell
>Special Services ~ Interlibrary Loan and Books By Mail
>Jacksonville Public Library
>Jacksonville, Florida 32202
>ill at coj.net    904-630-2985
>

_________________________________________________________
I honestly think it is better to be a failure at something you
love than to be a success at something you hate.   - George Burns

Julia Graham
ILL Coordinator, Humboldt State University
1 Harpst St.
Arcata, CA 95521
jlg7001 at humboldt.edu
707-826-4889  
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