[ILL-L] OVERDUE BOOKS

[Breedlove, W Stephen]

Dear List,

>From my experience for the last few years, there appears to be an epidemic of overdue books in interlibrary loan land--not just a couple of weeks overdue--but months and years overdue.  After a recall in OCLC, an email reminder, an invoice, then another invoice after a few months, and maybe another invoice in another few months--and still no book or check for replacement charges--What is the next best approach?  (We will accept a brand new copy of the book in lieue of payment of an invoice.)  Several libraries have books borrowed from us that are two or more years overdue.  Keep in mind that these initial invoices have been sent to the person in charge to whom I have been instructed that invoices be sent.  Should I send another iinvoice to the director of the library and hope this gets some results?  Wishful thinking?  We have stopped lending to a few of these offending libraries.  But what does it take to get a response?  

Currently, we have approximately 40 books that are overdue for three months to several years.  This seems a lot to me, but I have no idea how this compares to other libraries' overdue load.  We have been a very large net lender for years, but because of budget restrictions we have drastically cut back on our lending in order to reduce shipping costs.  Not lending to the big offending libraries gives us one criterion to use to reduce costs.

How do you get libraries to pay your invoices for replacement costs if they cannot return the books?  It seems unethical to just let it go.  From our end we try to return books on time.  If we cannot return the book, we pay the lending library's invoice.

Any thoughts on this?

W. Stephen Breedlove, MLS, MA
Reference Lbirarian/Interlibrary Loan Coordinator
La Salle Universty Library
breedlov at lasalle.edu
215-951-1862