Could I make an appeal, please, for extra care to be taken when submitting
claims to the BL for reimbursement for items supplied to other libraries ?
Our library uses pre-paid interlending request forms (the blue & white and
green & white forms which have request numbers such as L123456 & P123456)
when requesting ILLs from other libraries.
On six occasions over recent months, we have been charged again for such
requests on our BL billing account, together with handling charges made by
the BL, because individual libraries have not sent the C copies of the forms
to the BL, but have rather just quoted the form's number. When this is done,
the BL is not aware that a pre-paid form has been used, and so debit
accordingly.
Although all the libraries concerned have been very apologetic and helpful
when it comes to rectifying the mistakes made, it is very time-consuming and
long-winded trying to put things right.
The BL's page at http://www.bl.uk/services/document/reimburse1.html is very
clearly arranged and explains fully the procedures that need to be followed
when claiming reimbursement for items supplied on ILL.
We may now decide to stop using pre-paid forms completely to prevent this
happening again, but we, together with I'm sure many other libraries, have a
large number of these forms already in circulation, which we can only hope
will be processed correctly.
Thank you,
Louise Allum
Inter-library loans
Falmer Library
University of Brighton
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