Inter-library loans

[fivemack]

An ILL through Cambridge library used to cost three pounds, and this was a magical level: instead of paying £2.76 to Amazon for a book from a 1p-seller who charged the standard postage, I could pay £3 and the library would take the book away afterwards.

I suppose that this should have struck me as strange, since an ILL implies moving the book from one library to another and back and second-class postage for a book is £2.36 each way; but maybe you could cut a factor two off that by posting books in batches, it doesn't matter to me if an ILL takes two weeks.

I went in to collect an ILL today and was told that the fee had gone up to five pounds. I pointed out that this stopped them being competitive with Amazon, and the librarian said 'but it costs us thirteen pounds to process an ILL'. Librarian salaries are about £20k per year, so with overheads this is saying that it takes most of an hour of librarian time plus postage for a second-class small packet to do a single ILL.

This isn't a problem for me; I can switch to buying the books from Amazon, and I can donate them to the library afterwards if I want the library to take them away. But I'd have used the service less if I'd known it was so expensive to provide.

Comments

[uitlander]

Hmm. In all the Universities I have worked before it has been made pretty clear to us the International Library Loans were a subsidised privilege to be used for academic purposes only. In Oxford and Newcastle they were rationed, and I was not able to make more that 5 ILL requests per term (this was very annoying as much of the material required for my D.Phil. research was only available in Belgium).

I have to admit to being shocked to learn you've been using it in this way, although I accept that the UL do not make this at all clear in it's documentation on the subject.

[mobbsy.livejournal.com]

fivemack said "Inter-library loans", not "International Library Loans".

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

This is Cambridge City Library not the University Library - I'm an Oxford MA which doesn't give me any rights at the UL - and Inter-Library Loan rather than an international one - the book I've just picked up via ILL is from the geography library of the University of Leeds.

I've used it four times this year, which I don't think counts as improper profligacy; the fact that it's there to be used was somehow more comforting than its use. I've summoned books from the depths of the Cambridge City Library collection significantly more often than that - I don't think more than half the books I've borrowed this year are ones I've picked up off the open shelves of the Grand Arcade building, I'd be entirely happy with a library without open shelves, where you fill in a webform and come in each Saturday to collect a parcel of books.

[uitlander]

I appear to have firmly grasped the wrong end of this stick. I didn't realise the City Library offered an ILL facility, so had assumed you must be using the UL. I stand corrected. My apologies.

[meirion.livejournal.com]

I suspect it's probably cheaper to process an ILL than to fetch a book out of storage! I'll find out what happens to books donated to the library and report back.