At 8:35 AM 23/6/97, Martin Beet wrote:
>Surely you don't expect people to _buy_ all the books they need
I don't expect their institution to buy all the books they might want to
read only those which the institution considers are needed to fulfill the
requirements of the insitution. I expect their insitution and library to
have some policy other that spening money and staff time to buy whatever
they ask fo and staff time to borrow whatever they ask for.
> As a user, I think that ILLs are
>an excellent solution.
They are great. You don't have to pay. The library does.
>Even at 40% off retail (which to me seems
>optimistic at best, especially if you consider P&P),
www.amazon.com if offerning that at the moment.
> if I'd had to buy
>all the books I have been able to get through ILLs, all my demonstrating
>pay would have gone into buying books!
I'm not saying you should have to buy them all. I'm saying that -
1. If they are out of print then the library should borrow them for you if
it has a policy to borrow the material you are asking for.
2. If it is in print, and it is in an area the library collects, then it
can probably get it faster from an online bookshop than via inter library
loan suppliers and it should buy it for you rather than borrow. The library
would know that it was buing a book that was going to be used rather than
buying something in the hopeful expectation of use.
3. If it is not something that it would normally buy and it is available
quickly from an online bookstore it should facilitate your access to the
bookstore to buy yourself.
Hopefully your interests correspond to the library that serves you so that
option 3 would rarely apply.
Tony
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University, ACT 0200 AUSTRALIA
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