[ILL-L] Friday Rants: Renewals, Not Yet Published books, Ignoring Recalls, Requests w/o OCLC numbers

[Britt, Kathy]

Heather-I feel your pain!  Here's how I deal with some of the problems you've listed:

1)       Before I say "No Renewal" in ILLiad, I send an email in ILLiad that basically says that all of our loans are clearly marked No Renewals and loaned for a generous 10 weeks and asking them to contact us IN ADVANCE if there are extenuating circumstances that warrant an exception to this policy.

2)      This happens because when a library orders a book in advance of publication, the holdings are added to OCLC.  If a library is using Direct Request, library staff may not have the opportunity to weed out the request before it goes to the lending library.

3)      I always send a Recall email in ILLiad before recalling the loan in OCLC.  This usually gets the attention of the borrowing library.  Since I started sending the email, I haven't had as much of a problem with libraries ignoring the OCLC recall.  It just takes 2 extra clicks to send the email once the email template is set up in ILLiad.

4)      Fishing expedition!  Can't help you here...sorry.

5)      I have this problem, too, especially with consortial borrowers I've had to block in ILLiad.  It is frustrating, but I've found that calling the library and talking with a person takes care of this particular problem.  But, all they can do is remove our symbol from their custom holdings, so if we are one of only a few libraries that hold something, we'll still get a request (unless they create a custom holdings group called "DO NOT REQUEST").  I've suggested this to a few libraries.  Fortunately, we don't have very many blocked libraries.

Hope this helps-just know that you are not alone in your frustration!

Kathy
EMU ILL Lending Coordinator

From: ill-l-bounces at webjunction.org [mailto:ill-l-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Campbell, Heather
Sent: Friday, December 11, 2009 11:46 AM
To: Interlibrary Loan Listserv
Subject: [ILL-L] Friday Rants: Renewals, Not Yet Published books, Ignoring Recalls, Requests w/o OCLC numbers

Still fairly early in the day, I was hit -one after another- by ILL pet peeves:


 *   A library asked for a renewal (we lend for 60 days so we don't renew; this is highlighted on all labels and paperwork) for books that aren't due until 1/18/2010.
 *   A library wanted us to lend them a book that won't be published until next year.  Asking for 2010 books has been happening since June of this year.
 *   We recall overdue books starting when they are a week or more overdue. I'm still astounded by the percentage of overdues that make invoice stage where no one at the borrowing libraries has responded to the recall notices.  Does anyone pay attention to recall notices?
 *   A library requested sheet music.  All the info we received was the name of the very prolific composer and the title Piano Concerto. No OCLC number was given. How do they know we own this? Or is this a 'fishing expedition"?
 *   We send conditionals to libraries who have longstanding overdues explaining that we can't loan them any more books until the overdues are cleared up.  Yet they keep sending requests. No, these aren't Direct Requests; our symbol is listed twice.

Can anyone enlighten me? Any rationale you can come up with for any of these situations?


Heather Campbell, Senior Librarian

Manager- Interlibrary Loan

Jacksonville Public Library (JPL)

303 North Laura Street

Jacksonville, FL 32202-3505 heatherc at coj.net  (904) 630-2986


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