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