ILL numbers

During the fall semester, the PHC Library borrowed & returned more than 3,000 items from other libraries.

Since Jan 11, 2005, the library has already received nearly 1500 items and has returned over 480 items.

I've been getting calls over the past two weeks from libraries that are letting me know that we returned the wrong materials to them. When that happens, it's a problem in our packaging & addressing.

Last semester, we had a bunch of books go missing in the mail. I was able to identify at LEAST 6-10 packages that were all mailed within a week (possibly the same day) that didn't make it to their destination for at least six weeks. During Christmas break, some of them made it to their destination and 3-5 ended up back at our library without explanation (no "address unknown" or other notations).

When I checked the USPS web site, I found that they claim to have a 95% rate of on-time delivery for local first-class mail. Since we are mailing our books by media mail all across the country, I imagine I would be optomistic to expect as good as service. Even if I assume a 95% rate of on-time delivery for our 3,000 ILL's last semester, that still leaves 150 packages that I can expect to encounter problems in the mail system.

Then I can add to that problems that are created by students mis-packaging items, so they are returned to the wrong library. While I appreciate my student assistants to no end and couldn't survive without them, there are days when I believe that expecting 95% accuracy from them is asking too much. So that means that I could expect another 150 ILL requests to have problems.

At which point, thinking about the possible problems becomes depressing and counter-productive.

I think I'll work on hiring someone else to handle all these problems.