[ILL-L] Restricting ILL lending

[Campbell, Heather]

We managed to cut our Lending fills by around 20%  when our Admin
limited us to only using the Main Library's collection as a response to
the spike in gas prices last summer.  The way my staff and I looked at
it was that this might have a negative effect on our Borrowing fills. We
felt that we built up a lot of goodwill from the libraries we lend to
that would pay off when it came time to borrow.  Since last summer,
there have been other factors affecting our ILL services: 
*  Our library is buying fewer copies.  What's left is getting checked
out more by our customers and isn't available for lending.  Since I help
also process  borrowing requests, I'm also seeing more unfills with the
reason for no: In use.
*  In years past, we would have had no problem getting a book published
the previous year for a customer in March.  It's April, and it's still
difficult to fill 2008-published book requests.

So- if you limited your lending fills to your headquarters library, the
high demand/smaller pool of items to lend factor may help cut fill
numbers and the postage and mailing supply costs.


Heather Campbell
Special Services ~ Interlibrary Loan and Books By Mail
Jacksonville Public Library (OCLC:JPL)                    303 North
Laura Street
Jacksonville, Florida 32202
heatherc at coj.net  904-630-7017  VM:904-630-2985


-----Original Message-----
From: ill-l-bounces at webjunction.org
[mailto:ill-l-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Avery Hicks
Sent: Monday, April 20, 2009 2:30 PM
To: Interlibrary Loan Listserv
Subject: [ILL-L] Restricting ILL lending

We are looking at different ways to reduce postage costs. The bulk of
our postage costs is in lending items out to other libraries. We do not
want to resort to charging other libraries for loans, restricting
formats, or limiting by geographic area of borrowing libraires. One
option on the table is restricting the volume of lending in general.  
The idea is to set a postage budget for the month, and when we have
reached the maximum amount that month, we will temporarily go
non-supplier for the remainder of the month. The clock basically
"resets" at the beginning of the following month.

Has anyone out there tried something like this? I'm not crazy about the
idea, but it seems more equitable than restricting formats or
out-of-state lending. Does anyone else have any other strategies that
don't including charging lending fees or postage fees to other
libraries?

Thanks for your input!

Avery Hicks
Reference Librarian
Williamsburg Regional Library
7770 Croaker Road
Williamsburg, VA 23188-7064
(757)259-7720         www.wrl.org
(757)259-7798(fax)    ahicks at wrl.org
********************************************************************




_______________________________________________
ILL-L mailing list
ILL-L at webjunction.org
http://lists.webjunction.org/mailman/listinfo/ill-l