Interlibrary Loan Code

On April 21, 2010, at the Forum Building in Harrisburg, a committee was convened to study the 1994 Interlibrary Loan Code of the Commonwealth and make recommendations to update the code. The committee is composed of 3 university librarians, 3 public librarians, 1 special librarian, 1 school librarian, and 1 librarian from the State Library--all of whom are involved with interlibrary loan in their respective libraries. Also meeting with us that day were 9 resource librarians, representing the same categories as the committee members. The Chair of the committee is Tina LaMark of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.

Prior to the meeting, LaMark read through the ILL Code and noted sections that she thought should be revised or eliminated. She provided us all with a copy of her findings as a discussion starter. Also prior to the meeting it was suggested that we all read The Interlibrary Loan Code for the United States, prepared by the Reference and User Services Association; the explanatory supplement for the same; and A Manifesto for Rethinking Resource Sharing, affirmed by the American Library Association.

I was pleased to note that day that much of the discussion dealt with loosening the restrictions of the original ILL Code. When the Code was originally devised library administrators feared that reliance on interlibrary loan would cause their Boards to reduce funding for new library materials; and larger library systems feared that their collections would be depleted by smaller libraries requesting everything possible. Happily, neither one of these scenarios came true. Studies have shown that library collections overlap only 25%; each library builds a collection specific to it's patrons needs. But each library also has patrons that have needs that can't be satisfied locally.

(I remember years ago a second grader asked me for information on the Russian Revolution--a 2nd grader! "Oh, honey, I don't have any books on the Russian Revolution for your reading level," was all I could answer. Two weeks later the same child asked me for books on the Holocaust. At that point I figured out that his older brother was probably sharing with him stories that he heard in his history class. Fortunately, the child was satisfied with some photocopies on the topics from World Book Encyclopedia. My point is that librarians can't anticipate every question they get from their patrons, and they certainly can't buy every book or database "just in case.")

Our discussion on April 21st was fruitful, but we decided that we don't need to gather together in one room to work on this document. Google Documents will work just fine for what we need to accomplish. So, the Chair has since published the 1994 document on Google Docs in workable sections, and sent it out to all of us to view and comment on and make changes. Later, the Chair will use all of our input to re-write the Code, which she will send out to us via Google Docs. Again, the committee will give input. We'll work like this throughout the summer, hopefully to have a fresh document ready for distribution at the Pennsylvannia Library Conference in the Fall. If this works, we'll only need to meet one more time, tentatively scheduled for Oct. 7th in Harrisburg.

As a closing comment, I am very pleased with the workings of the Committee to date. I'm the only school librarian on the committee (along with the committee's resource school librarian), but my comments were taken in the best spirit, and some of my suggestions were implemented. I was treated as an equal.

Thanks to the DASD Administration for enabling my participation on this Committee. It's quite a professional perk for me!