Happy Christmas from FIL, and the Executive Committee

Merry Christmas Everyone!

It’s almost Christmas, I can’t quite get my head around that! It doesn’t seem like Santa is due to visit so soon – maybe it’s the lack of winter weather?

We’ve been so busy over the past few months, lots of additional students, new services to promote and staff with less people to do it! I for one will be glad of the break. Our new High Demand Collection is up and running, one floor above our main service desk which means we need a member of staff there to ensure things are running smoothly. We have someone on a temporary 6 month placement who hasn't been replaced, another one on long term sick leave, one who was promoted and left for pastures new, another one who has resigned and is due to finish up next week, and 2 people who decided to save their annual leave until now. As you can imagine, trying to keep a service running with hardly any staff has not been easy. However, we had 3 newbies starting this week so that should hopefully ease things a little. Get them thrown in at the deep end, training on the front desk from the start and hope they come back after the Christmas break!

I’m currently training one of our newer members of staff in ILL. I haven’t had to do any training for a while so I think I forget sometimes just how many little things there are to remember. Since I’ve been doing this job for a while (scared to count the years) I suppose a lot of things are just automatic to me and when I have to point out all the little differences between things that on the surface appear to be the same I realise that it is a lot for someone to remember, particularly when they only work in ILL one week in every 8, or something like that. We’ve also changed a few procedures lately with regard to the new copyright law so I feel that I am having to think about some things a bit more before telling someone else how to do them. Then, making sure everyone else who won’t be working in the ILL section for a while is also aware of the changes and that they remember what’s different by the time they are back on my rota!

I definitely need a break. I think all of our staff do. Hopefully we’ll start the new year afresh with new staff and things will seem a bit easier since we’ll have some extra pairs of hands. Of course, that means more training…….better get the summer holiday booked up so I have another break to look forward to!

Hope you all have a great Christmas! Enjoy the break, I’m sure we all need it!

Joanne

Christmas in Inter-Library Loans

Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year to you all out there!

I'm sure I'm not the first to wish you all a Merry Christmas but I do hope it will be a merry one for you all in ILL.

There are currently a lot of changes in the ILL world, especially in Public Libraries around the UK, as I am sure there are in Universities, HE and our specialist services too.  Once more the service is going through a difficult time, with spending cuts being imposed and what is often considered a 'premium service' receiving particular attention, we are once again looking at a shaky future.

In my experience ILL departments are already run with minimum staffing levels and yet you are still expected to cope with the same workload and often take on extra duties alongside the ILL work. However as usual ILL staff just accepts their lot and carries on as usual, giving the best service they can to their customers, making sure that what they are doing is the best, cheapest and quickest service available.

All of this is done for the benefit of the customers who very often have no knowledge of the ILL department and the trouble the staff go to in tracking down that elusive title. (…please can you get me a book I borrowed about 10 years ago, it was about a Welsh midwife, it had a green cover?)

It’s not that we want thanks from the customers, although the odd chocolate, mince pie or cake that gets handed over to the ‘front line’ staff by library customers would be very welcome.

But acknowledgement of a job well done by anybody, rather than the news that ‘you are costing the organisation far too much money’ wouldn’t go amiss occasionally!

So, to all the unacknowledged ILL departments out there:

THANK YOU FOR ALL THE HARD WORK, THE PATIENCE AND THE EXPERTISE YOU USE IN TRACING THOSE ELUSIVE TITLES. IN MY OPINION YOU ARE ALL HEROS OF THE LIBRARY SERVICE.

So have a good Christmas, regroup, recharge and see you all again in January for more interesting times on the ‘coal face’ of inter-library loans.

Tracey Jackson
Hertfordshire Libraries
FIL Vice-Chair & Marketing Officer

FIL the Frog Goes to Boston Spa

‘Fil’ the Frog goes to Boston Spa

Friday 28^th November was circled in the calendar and both ‘Fil’ and I were very excited to be going on a trip to Boston Spa for the Forum for Interlending event at the British Library. Not only was this my first visit to the British Library but actually, my first visit to York. With all the lovely Christmas lights, York was very picturesque and definitely somewhere I would like to revisit. 

We were met by a very nice lady at the station and taken on the short drive to the British Library through the lovely countryside. First impressions for me were like entering some kind of military base which made perfect sense when we were informed that the site had originally been a munitions factory.

Despite there being some issues with trains at Doncaster, we were delighted that everyone who had booked to come for the day managed to get there. Unfortunately these delays did set us back a little with timing but we tried our best to keep up with the schedule of the day.

There were lots of treats in store for us: and not just the lovely home-made biscuits!

Firstly Claudia Howard gave a talk on Consortia in Wales and all the benefits that forming a consortium can bring. There followed a very informative update on where we stand in respect of the changes in copyright legislation from Chris Morrison. We hope that everyone will now take on board that they can supply articles and chapters from e-resources, provided that the supply of the items conforms to the permitted exceptions. (woohoo!)

Kate Ebden from the British Library gave us an update of the developments at BLDSS and we were able to see some of these in practise on our tour of some of the buildings, including the Imaging department where we saw what happens to our academic theses when we send them for digitisation – amazing machinery! Also the fantastic automated retrieval of items is really quite staggering to watch!

We finished off with a very whistle stop workshop where we could, in groups, discuss some of the day-to-day issues that affect us as ‘ILLers’ and how we deal with them.

The day absolutely whizzed by and it was 4 o’clock before we knew it, time to get everyone back to York station to make their way home. ‘Fil’ and I had a great day, meeting lots of new people and catching up with lots of others. It was a busy but very rewarding and enjoyable day – thank you to Kate and her team for making us so welcome and for the lovely lunch J

‘Fil’ was so tired that he just went straight to bed zzzzzzzzzz