One of the cool unanticpated side-effects of being able to see the library books I’ve got checked out as an RSS feed is that when inter-library loans come in, I see them in my newsreader well before I get an email from the library telling me they’ve arrived. Case in point:
This is true because ILL books get “pre-checked out” for you when they arrive, I assume because they have an immovable due date (when they have to get back to the “home” library).
While I’m here, let me again sing the praises of the inter-library loan. For the uninitiated, this is a service offered by most public libraries wherein if a book is not held in their own collection, they will scour the globe (or at least the continent) to find a copy for you and have it shipped to your home branch where you can borrow it just like a regular library book.
In the olden pre-computer days when ILL requests had to be delivered by canoe and sled-dog, this could take several months; with modern technology (along with the excellent ILL sleuths of the Provincial Library here on PEI), I’m finding many requests arrive within a week or two.
Inter-library loan makes your local public library much more powerful because it means, albeit with a time lag, their collection is essentially infinite.
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Still, the books themselves
Still, the books themselves will still have to come by canoe and sled-dog, and with no canoes and dogs going back with more book requests your harbors and kennels your suppliers are going to run out of dogs and canoes pretty fast. Could be a boone for harbor and kennel real estate though.
Still, the books themselves
Still, the books themselves will still have to come by canoe and sled-dog, and with no canoes and dogs going back with more book requests your suppliers are going to run out of dogs and canoes pretty fast. Could be a boone for harbor and kennel real estate though. (must learn to proof read)
As it turns out, I was TOO
As it turns out, I was TOO fast: the book got “checked out” up in Morell, and hadn’t made its way in to Charlottetown when I went to pick it up this afternoon.
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