In a message dated 24/08/02 9:01:05 AM GMT Daylight Time,
owner-rara-avis@icomm.ca writes:
<< I don't know how widespread my experience is in the
UK. It may be that each
council (or indeed, library) has a degree of autonomy
in deciding whether to
provide this service or not. >>
In the good old days - ie, pre-Thatcher - inter library loans
was indeed universal and unquestioned; if you lived on one of
the lesser islands in the Outer Flanges and the only lending
copy of the book you wanted was ten days from the nearest
landing strip in a jungle in southern Africa, your local
library would get it for you. They might charge you a ten
pence fee, but if you were on a fixed income they'd waive
that. Formally, nothing has changed - in practice, however,
competition, free enterprise, efficiency, privatisation and
all those other good things have intervened, and ILL is one
labour intensive service which is easily (albeit
unofficially) dropped by many budget conscious library
authorities. Time was when if you belonged to one public
library, you belonged to every library on earth ... nowadays,
of course, that would be considered outrageously Stalinist
and uncompetitive.
- Mat C (ex library worker, in case you were wondering
...)
<A HREF="
http://hometown.aol.co.uk/matcoward/myhomepage/newsletter.html">
http://hometown.aol.co.uk/matcoward/myhomepage/newsletter.html>
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