Librarian Ire

ILL musings

What possesses someone to even think about sending in an Interlibrary Loan request 3 days before Christmas? Do you really think that anyone is going to look at it until the New Year?
I have several loans on my desk right now. Those will be stuck in shipping limbo until January. And the borrowing requests won't even get OPENED until after the semester starts.
I mean really.
And while I am on the subject of ILL, what's with the practise of hiring people to work there who are illiterate? Is this some sympathy deal or is it just plain old stupidity?
There are 2 libraries(major university libraries) that hire only idiots. My personal theory is they can't work anywhere else in the library so they send them to ILL thinking they will do the least amount of damage there. WRONG! They just annoy everyone else on the planet.
One thing that really gets me is wrong addresses. Every university in Utah has no concept of correct postal codes and addresses. If the postmark is Utah I can be 99% sure that it isn't a book for me. It will be for the main library or for a science library or even microfilm. But not from our collection. They send our stuff to other libraries and others libraries materials to us.
And we even send mailing labels with all our materials. Pre-printed and everything. All you have to do is use it. It's one of the self sticking too so there is no thinking involved. But that's too hard. My favorite Utah story is when they actually sent the right book back to us. Except they had the wrong address. Wrong zip code, wrong postal abbreviation, and wrong street number. The package looked like it had gone through a war. I was(and still am) amazed that the book made it back to us.
When I pointed out(quite nicely) our correct address all I got for my troubles was a snotty reply. Hey, it's not my fault you are stupid. I was trying to help you cut down on all those overdue and lost ILL fines you must pay.
But if you don't want my help it's fine. Just don't expect to get any sympathy when you lose one of my books. Just a bill.

posted by Nike at 10:58 AM