My own personal experience is that the InterLibrary Loan service has become worse over recent years, in spite of new technology which should make the service quicker and more responsive. Yet it is more necessary than ever given that many library authorities, including my own, put a price limit on the purchase of new books, and they have disposed of reserve stacks of older books.
Rival services like Amazon and Abebooks attribute much of their success to servicing what they refer to as "long Tail" demand for books, and yet public libraries have allowed the ILL service to decline and now consider abandoning it altogether.
Perhaps this is one of the reasons why less people are using libraries?
Martyn
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On Thu, 4/6/15, John Vincent <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Subject: Re: Inter Library Loans
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Thursday, 4 June, 2015, 16:01
Dear Veronica (and
list)
I completely
understand the financial pressures (and also value-for-money
issues if ILLs are not being used to any great extent).
However, I thought that our
ability to borrow almost any item from across the world was
one of libraries' unique selling points, and it's
very sad to think that we might be considering stopping
this.
Please could I also
put in a plea on behalf of home-based workers who are not
part of an institution, and therefore need to access
materials via ILL (unless they can afford to travel to a
legal deposit library, for example) - The Network, for
example, couldn't function properly without the terrific
ILL service via Devon Libraries!
Best wishes
John
-----Original
Message-----
From: lis-pub-libs: UK Public
Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Veronica Banting
Sent: 03 June
2015 15:42
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Inter Library Loans
Can I ask is there anyone who
has thought about or who has actually opted out of
providing Inter Library Loans to their users in the light of
budget cuts. Our loans on this are dwindling
fast
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