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Dear All, I wonder how other library services are dealing with this standard? We just fail to reach the standard of 85% - our actual for 04/05 is 83.4%. We have looked at every stage in the supply chain and made improvements - there is little more we can do from that end. We collect data for this standard by means of a sample, rather than every request. Our downfall is that we take pre-publication requests, and this skews the result without us having the means in our power to improve. When we know we are purchasing a book for a request, we fast-track it through ours and our supplier's systems. But obviously we order books pre-publication, and do not know exactly which ones will be requested, Harry Potter etc apart. In any case, the problem is primarily caused by taking pre-publication requests, rather than our supply times once published. We are determined to continue to offer pre-publication request service, as our customers make good use of this service, and we are not going to reduce our service quality to meet an externally-imposed performance standard. I believe that when the standards were originally introduced, there was talk that some way would be devised to allow for best practice such as ours that appeared to show under-performance relative to other library services that do not take requests for books not yet published. What do others do? I would be grateful for all responses, and will summarise for the list. Thanks in advance, Keith Patterson Senior Libraries Manager (Performance & Communications) St Helens Library & Information Services tel: 01744 677448 email: [log in to unmask]