[Publib] Re: ILL fees and costs + cost of reference service

[Rebecca Bronson]

From: Rebecca Bronson [mailto:rbronson at hrl.lib.state.va.us]
Sent: Tuesday, June 19, 2007 5:13 PM

Subject: RE: [Publib] Re: ILL fees and costs + cost of reference service


While we're on the topic, I wonder what the average cost of the average
reference transaction would be if you were to factor in staff time, cost of
database(s) and other sources used, etc. Hmmm.

Rebecca Bronson
Reference Librarian
Handley Regional Library
P.O. Box 1300
Stephens City, VA  22655

540-869-9000 (voice)
540-869-9001 (fax)

www.hrl.lib.state.va.us


-----Original Message-----
From: publib-bounces at webjunction.org
[mailto:publib-bounces at webjunction.org]On Behalf Of K.G. Schneider
Sent: Tuesday, June 19, 2007 4:57 PM
To: publib at webjunction.org
Subject: RE: [Publib] Re: ILL fees and costs


> I think our estimate was approximately $25 and that was calculated several
> years ago. But this is an important service to a fair contingent of our
> patrons. And, as someone else said, it represents "the long tail," of
> library service, one of those trendy things that might actually turn out
> to be useful. ;)

I appreciate you pointing this out, as a beneficiary of ILL (some books I
need for research and writing are in libraries hundreds or thousands of
miles away... I would have no way of accessing them without ILL). As for
eliminating sacred cows... wow, Joe, that sounds painful. ;-)

I know the traditional approach to ILL is "only buy it if you're going to
keep it," but as I noted earlier, I wonder if a cost analysis would always
bear out the cost of requesting, circulating, retrieving, and returning ILL
items, even for things you think you aren't going to circ much or at all...
even if after it circs you discard it... or for that matter, sold it on
Amazon yourself. (This is a companion to my thoughts about pool collections,
which are that it might be cheaper just to buy books outright, have them
shipped to the libraries preprocessed, and tell the libraries to sell them
when they're done with them.)

K.G. Schneider
kgs at freerangelibrarian.com

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