Inter-Library Loan Moan

So GT finally managed to dig up the Inter-Library Loan vouchers from his desk of horrors, and armed with five vouchers and five Inter-Library Loan forms I went on my way to the library. But unfortunately, I had the wrong vouchers! These were £3 vouchers, and they had been replaced last December by £4 vouchers. When I wasn’t entirely jumping at the chance of paying £5 extra – if the department pays for Inter-Library Loans, then wrong vouchers are the department’s problem and not mine – I got told by the library woman that I was unreasonable because the Inter-Library Loans were heavily subsidized anyway as they cost £20 to process.

If they cost £20 to process, they might as well buy the book!

In the end, it got sorted because I just went and collected more vouchers from GT. Now all I can do is wait. In my imagination, how an Inter-Library Loan is processed is as follows. Library bod in Edinburgh reads form, sees that I have already written down which libraries possess this book, sends e-mail to other library. Library bod in Oxford (which is the other library) sees e-mail, prints out e-mail, looks up shelfmarks, walks to shelves, picks up two books, picks up two journals, walks to photocopier, photocopies three articles, puts journals back on the reshelving shelf, walks back to desk, shoves books and photocopies in envelope, puts envelope in outgoing mail. There maybe some filling in forms involved but library bods are allegedly literate so that shouldn’t be too much of a problem. Envelope gets sent to Edinburgh. Library bod in Edinburgh opens envelope, sends me e-mail, I come pick up the books straightaway. Really this should be possible in two, maybe three days.

I’ve never had an Inter-Library Loan within four weeks.

Rant over.