[ILL-L] Borrowing vs Lending

[Campbell, Heather]

ILL lending and borrowing  stats need to be
the same, not one larger than the other.
 
Have any of you heard the same comment? 

I've heard that phrase from an administrator and felt that it was a flawed concept,  
 
JPL is a net lender.  While I know that lending credits don't take a huge amount off the OCLC bill, they do help lessen costs.  Being a net lender and participating in reciprocal arrangements and programs like LVIS. S06, and statewide free lending arrangements has enhanced our ability to get materials for our customers,  We charge borrowers that are fee-based lenders what they charge us and only accept payment via IFM, which also reduces our OCLC bill.
 
In ILL Borrowing, we don't pass along postage costs to our customers but customers are responsible for any lending or copying fees.  They pay these directly to the lender. 
 
If your lending or borrowing is more than the other, have you had to make
cuts? If yes, where and what was cut?
 
Yes- cuts were made but reducing Lending was not the intent; it was because of high fuel costs.   A year ago last month we stopped getting materials from our branches to fill Lending requests.  Admin felt that this would reduce the amount of fuel we would need to transport the Lending materials to and from branches.through the library delivery in time to fill requests.  Borrowing materials are still transported through library delivery.  That reduced the number of Lending fills by 20% on average.  We still are a net lender.
 
I don't know how or if the change is affecting Borrowing.  It's becoming more unusual to get materials for our customers on the first Lenders string,  There may be recession related factors at play.  I know our materials budget was reduced this past year and that our customers are requesting more 2008 books.  Florida libraries are funded using property taxes which were reduced due to property tax reform; they were already struggling when the recession hit.
We follow Borrowing protocols by requesting from nearby libraries before going to libraries outside of Florida.  After going through 3 lending string tries, we're having to tell our customers to wait a month before re-requesting the materials because our lenders are either telling us the material is too new to lend or is already on loan, (Question- how many lending strings do you go through before you ask your customers to try again later?)
 
This month -we lost our Lending position- permanently.  I do Lending in addition to my duties as manager. We've cut out or reduced other services we do in addition to ILL.  The remaining staff and I rarely take a day off; vacations are -really -unheard of and calling in sick is extremely rare.   I can foresee us having to go lower case if one or more of us is ill or unable to work for a period of time -ie more than a day or two.
 
Heather Campbell
Manager, Special Services (Interlibrary Loan & Books By Mail)
Jacksonville Public Library (JPL)
Jacksonville, FL 32202-3505
(904) 630-7017; VM: (904) 630-2986

________________________________

From: ill-l-bounces at webjunction.org on behalf of FFenske at cob.org
Sent: Thu 6/4/2009 1:50 PM
To: ill-l at webjunction.org
Subject: [ILL-L] Borrowing vs Lending




Our library, as probably all libraries, is in a budget crunch, and has to
cut a substantial amt of money from the budget.
The powers that be are looking at my ILL lending stats that have grown over
the last four years.
The borrowing stats stay about the same due to the fact that we pass on the
postage, lending and photocopy fees to the patron.
One comment made to me was that ILL lending and borrowing  stats need to be
the same, not one larger than the other.

Have any of you heard the same comment?
If your lending or borrowing is more than the other, have you had to make
cuts? If yes, where and what was cut?
I'm trying to save as much of my ILL lending and possibly half of my job.
Any ideas are welcome.

Please reply off list,

Fay Fenske
Interlibrary Loans
Bellingham Public Library
210 Central Ave
CS-9710
Bellingham WA  98227-9710
360-778-7207
360-778-7294 FAX



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