Musings from a wet and windy Hertfordshire

As I sit here in our 'open plan' warehouse/office/book store, listening to the monsoon lashing down on our tin roof and watching through the loading bay doors the rain gusting about in every direction, I wonder 'Why are public library services considered the poor relation in the library world and more importantly why is ILL an added extra?'

Don't get me wrong, I think that Hertfordshire has a wonderful public library service that I'm proud to work for - our staff are dedicated to helping all comers, we have a wonderful Mobile library service.

We offer all sorts of online services, including ebooks, online audiobooks, language courses, online magazines, an enewsletter, access to all sorts of online reference books, services and even online courses in every subject you can imagine. But still ILL is not advertised, never fully understood by either the staff or customers and is still considered to be a premium service. Something that's expensive to do and to use and difficult to understand how to use it!

All this despite us making it easier to request as everything is done online via our library management system and yes we do charge but it's a small amount in the great scheme of things.

Just look at some of  the things we offer, a service where Joe Public can send in a request for a book they heard about, read about, saw on the television, not sure of the author or title but they know we'll get it for them. Or we have the Joe Public who knows exactly the book he wants, right down to the revised edition, with the forward by Sir Know-it-all published in Timbucktoo - but not the one published in January but the 2nd revised published on the third friday of July - yep, we'll get that for you.

That of course covers fiction and non fiction, don't worry how old the book is, how obscure, how expensive, we'll track it down somehow for you. (thank you OCLC WorldShare ILL) The US a boon for those wanting to borrow that item published in 1780 or actually worth £500 - no chance from anywhere in this country but you can guarantee a US location will lend it and usually accompanied by a lovely postcard from the lenders saying how wonderful it is to hear from us 'across the pond'.

Then of course we also supply large print and talking books.... and yes Mrs Smith we can get you that talking book on Cassette rather than CD, despite most authorities abandoning their cassette collections many years ago. We'll find it somewhere for you, even if we end up buying a second hand copy from Amazon Marketplace!

Of course along with large print, we also supply Giant print, braille and Moon - Giant print chick lit is amazing to see - so many volumes for one book!

Next we receive a request for children's picture books and stories in Hebrew - 'just 20 or so would be good, for a 4 year old boy and 7 year old girl. Whilst you are getting that collection can you also get a collection of 15 fiction titles in Bulgarian for a 80 year old lady who only likes romances, oh and a small collection of books on psychology in Malayalam too'. Of course no problems, we are a public service and will supply.... and if you are wondering, yes all of those requests were and are real. (Although I am still sorry for the poor man at the local prison who wanted books in Somali and at the time all we could get were books about Camels - including, he informed us a book of poetry to a camel. He was still very grateful that we could actually get something for him in his language! Thank heavens for Bright Books and their wonderful language service.

This is all just one small part of the services we offer here in ILL in Hertfordshire and I'm sure this is duplicated across the country. So why then do people not know what we do, why do we find it so hard to advertise/market ourselves and our services?

Maybe it is time to stand up and say loud and proud

'I am an inter-library loan person and I can deliver'

...or maybe I should just attend the FIL Conference this year for some ideas on marketing as this years conference is :

Northern Exposure: Marketing and Bench Marking for the Future - 23rd and 24th June.

Well, the rains stopped beating down on the tin roof, we can all hear ourselves think until the next wave comes over, so best get back to phoning round to find that book with the green cover about a welsh district nurse ' you know the one, I borrowed it about 20 years ago - can you get it for me again'.

Tracey Jackson - a proud Inter-Library Loan person

Hertfordshire Libraries

Holidays Holidays!

Holidays, Holidays!

With the weather here being pretty dismal, even for a British winter, thoughts and conversation here at work often strays to the subject of holidays.

And that got me thinking about our books and some of the exotic places, near and far that we have sent them.

I have offered on many occasions to accompany the books personally on their voyages but alas the idea didn’t go down so well with the Librarian.

However, just in this first week of February I could have accompanied a book to Cyprus, New York, Carolina or Pennsylvania – although given the current weather in the US perhaps I would have opted to go to Cyprus.

Either way, this year it seems that the books in our library will certainly be more traveled than me!

  

Definitely think I may have to go to Cyprus to bring the item back though:)

photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/terykats/5556268447/">TeryKats</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/">cc</a>

Up Close & Personal

I thought I'd take this opportunity to reflect on Caroline Rauter's blog post. Caroline first met at Interlend 2008, Peebles. This conference has long stayed in my memory; mainly because we were piped into dinner! 

Caroline and I have similar roles at our institutions and by forging the relationship that we have both professional and personally has been advantageous to us both. So what has that got to with FIL I hear you ask? 

Awhile back, at a committee meeting it was mooted to set up an 'Interlending Buddy' Scheme; but the idea never really went anywhere, and the blog post from Caroline reminded me how important it is to communicate and talk to others.

Off the top of my head; this is how it would work

• You submit your details to FIL
• We match you with a suitable 'buddy'. 
•   Interlending Buddies; meet, discuss & share working practices. 
•  Interlending Buddies write up their experiences for the FIL Journal.

Before I take it to the committee formally, I want to know what you the members think.

Do you think it would be useful and is it something that you could engage with? 

Feel free to comment here on the blog, via FORUMFORINTERLENDING@jiscmail.ac.uk or email me your thoughts - this is your forum so please use it!

Also, the Call for Speakers for Interlend 2014 went out last week, have you got something that you’d like to present on in Edinburgh this July? If so, check out the FIL website for more details.

Marie Lancaster

FIL Chair

mflancaster@cardiffmet.ac.uk

Looking for a stimulating and creative opportunity with like minded library people …?

If so read on …. I don’t mean to sound like a dating site but a friend told me that during January apparently new members on dating sites increase … I can’t promise you this opportunity will result in you meeting Prince or Princess Charming (it might do though) but it will definitely lead you to a frog. He is called Fil and is looking for a few new friends … I am not sure what his views are on kissing so please ask him beforehand to avoid any embarrassment … So yes, FIL needs a couple more friends to join the committee. We are a friendly bunch and would welcome any interest from personal or institutional members who wish to stand on the FIL committee. The committee is made up from interlending staff from different sectors and parts of the country. We also have observers from CONARLS, the British Library and IFLA. In order to become a committee member there is a tiny bit of form filling and a small vote at the AGM at Interlend. It is all above board and there are no awful initiation ceremonies … Committee members serve for two years (they can be re-nominated for a further two years if they wish) and meet approximately 4 times a year with telecon meetings in-between. Any travel expenses incurred attending Committee meetings are reimbursed and you get a very good lunch. We are currently meeting in a very nice pub in central Birmingham. Did I mention John Lewis is shortly to open in Birmingham..? I have been a committee member for the past two years and can honestly say it’s a great opportunity to learn more about interlending work and how committees work. It is also your opportunity to make a difference … and maybe kiss a frog … Please contact any Committee member if you would like to know more … Jennie

New Year, New Journal

New Year, New Journal

Happy New Year to you all and hopefully by now you will have received your copy of the new look FIL Journal - previously FIL Newsletter.

We have a new front cover and new layout for articles, we are hoping that you like the new format and please do let us know if you do....or don't!

We always welcome your feedback on the journal and more importantly for me, I do welcome your articles. As I've said many times and I'm sure I will say again, the journal can only be produced if we receive articles and I can't keep relying on the committee to write them all the time. Partly because it's not fair on them to have to keep coming up with subjects to write about but also you as a reader of the journal are going to get fed up seeing articles from the same people.

So come on, all you budding authors out there set pen to paper - well okay, fingers to keyboard and let us have your thoughts, views, news on interlending where you are. Have you got a new system in place, tackled a particularly difficult search with good or bad results, do you have hints and tips for searching that you are willing to share with others or just let us know what you get up to on a day to day basis in your department. We also love to receive reports of FIL events you have attended, either the FIL@BL London, the FIL@BLDSC event or the annual FIL Conference or any ILL related event.

We are happy to receive any length article and if you can supply photographs too, that would be an added bonus. One thing we do ask is for a head and shoulders shot of the author, just so the readership can put a face to a name...or article.

The next Journal is due to be produced March/April but that is dependent on receiving enough articles to fill the journal, so there is no pressure on submitting for the next edition, if you miss the deadline then the article can appear in the following journal.

Please send you articles to tracey.jackson@hertfordshire.gov.uk with photo's attached and I will get back to you to let you know when we hope to publish your article. I will now sit back and happily await all your excellent articles to come flooding into my inbox - happy writing!

Tracey Jackson
FIL Newsletter Editor

Happy New Year All!

Hope that you all had a lovely Christmas and New Year. It certainly is a shock to the system as today is my first day back in! 

I'm delighted to say that today's blog post is a guest one and there was very little arm twisting done to get it either! I'd like to say a big 'Thank You' to Caroline Rauter at Swansea University for the contribution. If you would like to follow in Caroline's footsteps - please do get in touch!

Marie Lancaster

FIL Chair

I don’t get out much...

Just before Christmas I was pleased to be invited by Marie Lancaster to attend the forward planning meeting for the Document Delivery Working Group at Cardiff Metropolitan University. Marie and I have known each other for several years having met at a FIL conference and as well as becoming friends, have developed a very useful collaborative working relationship.

It was extremely interesting to explore the similarities and the differences between two institutions delivering a traditional inter-library loan service. I was particularly intrigued to find out how Cardiff Met intends to phase out paper request forms for the 2014-15 academic year.  It is not something that I have been brave enough to contemplate, but as Swansea University will be opening a second campus in 2015 it is something that we would like to emulate.  Any opportunity to cut down on the amount of paper that we use as a service instinctively feels like a good idea, even though a paper trail can be really useful when unpicking some of the intricate queries that we sometimes get.

It also seems that we are more cautious with our expenditure and authorisation mechanisms than Cardiff Met. Their patrons do not require authorisation whereas we still require postgraduate and undergraduate requesters to have obtained a payment authorisation before we process the requests.  They have a defined I.L.L. budget and keep a record of departmental spending to ensure that their total expenditure stays within a pre-defined limit. In contrast, we charge a portion of the inter-lending cost back to individual departments with the library general fund subsidising the rest of the charge. Perhaps it is time for us to review all of our procedures?  How do I sell self-authorised I.L.L.s to management as beneficial... plenty to think about in 2014!

Discussions also ranged across their successful in-house undergraduate theses digitisation project for the repository; coping with multi-site relocations; contemplating e-delivery as a default setting; the proposed shared welsh library management system (LMS); archiving declaration forms and marketing the Document Delivery Service. I particularly liked their very professional, branded book-straps and came away with a sample to wave under my manager’s nose.

If you are able to create the opportunity for closer collaboration with another institution or library authority I would encourage you to discover the benefits of sharing good practice and innovation. It works for me.

Caroline Rauter

Document Supply Services Manager, Swansea University 

Well.

Christmas is nearly here! How does that work then? We all start complaining when we see Christmas things vying for shelf room in the shops with the increasing amounts of Halloween paraphernalia and then allofasudden its here! Or nearly anyway.

In Huddersfield Inter-library Loans land we are still liking Clioweb, our ILL system that utilizes the BLDSS API. Being able to check holdings at BL and on COPAC as an intrinsic part of processing the request is FAB and then being able to check actual availability at BL...well… the team are still in raptures. The irony has not been lost on them, shall we say, that  since we merged our own catalogue with our e-resources search engine, it has actually been easier to search everyone else’s stuff than it is our own! Though our guy has been working on that and it’s getting better. On Clio we’ve also had a few problems with search speeds, but the suppliers have improved that a bit too and are still working to make it even better. Sending a request off after it has been matched with an actual record at the BL is so easy that a bit of complacency has even crept in recently, and we’ve fired off a couple where, as is inevitable with any catalogue search, the record returned wasn’t actually an exact match for what we wanted. The adage “Read the screen carefully” still holds true with the best of systems!

We’ve been watching the new University Learning and Leisure Centre, now branded Student Central, develop out of the window. It’s nearly finished and due to open in the New Year. It’s one of those modern buildings that lights up Multi-colours and they can project all sorts onto it. We’ve been having our own Christmas light show as they’ve been testing it.

We’ve also been trying to join in this year’s Christmas Jumper craze. Bridget Jones or was it Colin Firth? Eat your heart out! Even FIL the Frog was getting in on the act as I was enjoying my proof copy of the FIL journal. A modest donation is winging its way to Save the Children as we speak!

Well Hope you all have a well deserved rest over Christmas, I think we probably all deserve it.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS AND HAVE A FANTASTIC 2014

from the Interloaners at the University of Huddersfield

Cheers

Chris

Customer Services Librarian

University of Huddersfield