Tuesday, May 1, 2018
Note: We are receiving complaints again about tape being used on borrowed ILL items. This article was originally posted in December of 2016, but it appears that it’s time for a refresher!
Guest Post written by Charles Clemence
I like to think that nothing much surprises me anymore including election results and the Packers' curious inability to win consistently with one of the best quarterbacks to ever play the game. But I am constantly surprised at how much passion the issue of tape arouses in the ILL community. To use or not use, removable or non-removable, everyone seems to have an opinion. Myself included. Over 25 years ago I wrote a (supposedly) humorous article for the Winding Rivers Library System newsletter, suggesting (jokingly) that perhaps librarians were getting kickbacks from the Scotch tape people, judging by the amount of tape I saw used on ILL items. I thought that was funny, although I'm not sure anyone else did.
As to tape, a couple of comments:
1. The prohibition on tape in the new ILL guidelines refers to items owned by other libraries. If you want to send your own items out covered in tape - go for it. But when returning items you borrowed, my experience is that it's best to follow the guidelines, however arbitrary they seem. ILL is based on having cooperative lenders. In fact, it couldn't exist without them. If some don't like tape, then the prudent course is to not use it for any.
2. The ILL guidelines are just that - guidelines. If you don't follow them the library police aren't going to show up at your door. At least I don't think they will. However, if you don't follow the guidelines a lender would be free to refuse your loan requests for that reason. For myself, I've always tried to avoid using tape. If necessary, I tape the label to a rubber band and put that combination around the item. Some don't like this solution, but if you use removable tape on the rubber band it isn't too obnoxious to dismantle.
As to labels, most of the problems described in the earlier comments sound like human error or a combination of software issues and human error. If anyone has come up with a way to keep people from making mistakes they're doing a good job of keeping it a secret. And the perfect software package continues to elude us as well.
Moreover, going back to exclusive use of pink routing labels would only make these problems worse. I remember when we had that system and there were a lot more errors than there are now. Also, unless you print the information on the pink labels - something that isn't always possible - the problem of reading the labels arises. No one wants to read my handwriting, I know that.
That's my 2 cents. Or maybe more like a nickel.
Written by:
Charles Clemence, Winding Rivers Library System