[ILL-L] What's with genealogy, anyway??

[Robinson, Arthur]

I feel your pain.  I spend too much of my time explaining to my patrons (including the student who wanted a 300-page book by 5 p.m. and couldn't understand why we couldn't have it faxed; he clearly thought my explanations were excuses for my incompetence).  
 
We had one patron who requested a lot of genealogy books on ILL.  I explained that hardly any libraries loaned genealogy books but most would provide photocopies, and suggested that we try to get photocopies of the entries (the name wasn't too common), but no, he wanted the actual books.  I tried hundreds of libraries but got only five of the books (one on the 43rd try).   I then suggested trying again for just a photocopy, but the patron said no.  
 
Since 1999 our ILL borrowing fill rates have been excellent except in two years--the two years when that patron was requesting his genealogy books.
 
 
 
Arthur Robinson (GLG)

________________________________

From: ill-l-bounces at webjunction.org on behalf of Richard Samford
Sent: Wed 9/3/2008 12:10 PM
To: ILL Mail list
Subject: [ILL-L] What's with genealogy, anyway??



    
    This is very frustrating, and impossible to explain to my patrons.
Can someone pu-lease tell me why this is such a standard way of replying
to genealogy requests?

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