The interlibrary loan is my favorite library service. I am amazed that the library will work so hard to find you exactly what you need and go through a series of channels to find it for you. There is little or no cost associated with this service, and the service that you receive is fantastic.
A few months back my husband asked me to go to a bookstore and pick up a specific book for him. I was very happy to oblige his request, but since we were (still are) trying to be careful with our budget, I asked if he would mind if I tried the library. My feeling is, truthfully, unless you are going to read/ refer to the book a number of times, why buy it? He reluctantly agreed, and I was off on my quest.
At the library reference desk, I asked if they had the book in their stacks. They did not, so she checked some nearby libraries. They did not have it either, so she then suggested that I take advantage of the interlibrary loan in order to locate the book. She explained that they would keep looking for the book, county to county than out to different states, asking the nearest ones first. The librarian took down the information and said that it might take a few weeks to get it. We got a phone call two weeks later that the book had come in and that we an come pick it up. When I went to get it, It said that it had come from a library in Oregon. We live in South Florida- that is one long trip!
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3 comments:
Oh wow, your library goes out of state for ILL? I thought most stayed within state. That's amazing. Were you charged any extra fee for shipping or anything?
It was such a great thing- and we have subsequently used the service many more times. We were not charged any fees, though we were given a limited amount of time to read the book (like 3 days!). We had to request renewals which had to be approved by the original lending library.
I had no idea that a public library would go to that much trouble to find a book. I cannot believe they shipped it over from Oregon! It is too bad they only gave you three days, but being able to renew helps. I'll have to look into this. Very interesting post!
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