ILL does not stand for International Library Loan

[thewayne]

I was looking through lending requests in our interlibrary loan system, and there were two requests for the same book on Montessori education. In my mind I said later date loses. I get the book off the shelf, look at the first request - it's for a university in Bankgkok, Thailand!

I cancel it and state a policy reason that we don't lend/ship internationally.

Open the second request - THEY'D CANCELLED!

Book goes back on the shelf, unloved, at least for now.

But at least that's two entries out of my queue. Only 160 or so more to clear. If only I could get my templates and OCLC link working!

Comments

[kraig]

heh, I discovered this week that some of our own ILL emails look remarkably like phishing, at least to faculty members who requested them. ILL stands for "ill email bro" I guess. :D Funny though, in this job nearly 10 years and that's the first time I've seen a complaint about those. (It does give a weird password protected link for ejournals.)

[thewayne]

We don't have a direct ILL email, for which I'm thankful! I just now started getting Request It emails from Alma for our university network and I've been there a month. *sigh*

[kraig]

I don't know for sure, but I suspect our library's ILL email is write-only. I think for the sorts of activities that result in phishing-like emails, you're filling out a webform to request access to some particular resource. Then you get an email from ill@uwaterloo saying "go to this URL (not hosted on campus) and use this password" where the URL is IIRC worldcat.org. Some non-profit started out of Ohio or Iowa or something. Anyway, something our librarians knew about, but which I only learned of Friday. :)

[thewayne]

My wife called me a librarian last night.  I said 'though I work at a library, I'm not a librarian as I don't have an MLS.'  I should burn the phrase "Big L Librarian" into the fore-part of my brain so I have it at the ready as some librarians are quite quick to take umbrage if that label is misused.  We have five permanent employees in our library: the director has a doctorate and her masters is an MLS or MLIS, I'm part-time, everyone else is full-time, and the other library aide also making less than $12/hr also has an MLS.  The other two, like I are Masters-less.

[silveradept]

There's...discussion, to put it politely, about the degree and the title and perceptions, and I'm finding myself more and more going to the opinion that a person that works in a library for long enough is a librarian, piece of paper be damned. But that's one opinion in a sea of them.

[thewayne]

I don't think our org would care, as small as we are.  But I would be careful to call myself such at a larger and more prestigious one.

[moonhare]

Our Reference Department made it clear long ago that we in Circulation were neither to be called Librarians nor to answer anything that smelled like a Reference question; I respect that, as there is hard work behind that MLS, and I scoff light-heartedly when patrons refer to me as one.

My son (#3) is a bonafide Librarian, and that makes me quite happy as he had been coming to work with me (and helping me with the IT) for the years up to getting that degree.

[silveradept]

Hooray for the easy ones?

[thewayne]

Occasionally!  ILL isn't difficult, but it is quite fiddly.  The ILLiad program has quite a number of steps, especially if you're a one-man shop like I am - larger operations like NMSU main campus has multiple people doing different functions.  But some people do ILL through WorldCat, and man!  It is REALLY complicated doing it that way! My network account was changed last week, and somehow that broke my templates and OCLC link inside ILLiad, and I'm flummoxed as to how that will be fixed.

[silveradept]

Oh, yay. Should be a thing your IT folk take care of, or can help with. If that's you, then you may need to contact the developers to get their help.