[ILL-L] BOOK CHAPTERS

[Peterson, Kim A.]

When comparing resources categories, our category for staff is always short. Our category for mailing is not limited. Besides we send USPS cheapest rate.

In our workflow which is set up for returnables, it's always faster to send the item. We do not have ILL staff dedicated to making copies.

It's entirely possible that if I costed out copying vs lending, that our institution's overall expense would be less for copying. But it might not--we invoice for copies (but do not activily collect on those invoices.)

But copying is a very small part of our ILL lending business, less than 5%, and it's not worth my time to cost out because I'm not going to allocate resources any differently for an activity that takes up less than 5% of our business.

Kim Peterson
St. Louis Public Library 


-----Original Message-----
From: ill-l-bounces at webjunction.org
[mailto:ill-l-bounces at webjunction.org]On Behalf Of Breedlove, W Stephen
Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2009 11:20 AM
To: ill-l at webjunction.org
Subject: [ILL-L] BOOK CHAPTERS



This issue may have been discussed on this list before.  But here goes:

For the life of me, I cannot understand why a library that receives a request for a book chapter will send the book rather than scan the chapter and send the article through Ariel or Odyssey or email.  This morning, we received a book from which we requested a ten or so page chapter.  The supplying library paid UPS fees to send the book to us and we will in turn have to pay UPS fees to send it back to them after we copy the chapter.  By sending the book rather than copying the chapter, the book could get lost or damaged in transit.  Plus, supplies such as shippers and tape are needlessly used.  

I could understand this if a library had no staff to copy or was "swamped," but it seems to me even in these cases they could just say NO and let the request go on to the next library who might copy the chapter.

Currently, we are operating on a restrictive budget as far as postage and UPS expenses--and supplies--are concerned.  We are using every angle possible to keep expenses to a minimum.  We always copy a chapter rather than send the book, unless the chapter is very, very long.  Copying a chapter is not violating copyright as far as I know.

Thoughts?

W. Stephen Breedlove
Reference and Interlibrary Loan Librarian
La Salle University Library
breedlov at lasalle.edu
215-951-1862


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