Libraries are so cool, and so are authors!

As I have mentioned before, I run interlibrary loan (ILL) at the library at which I work, a branch campus university library. And perhaps my favorite borrowers that I like to provide service to are prisons. Interestingly, I only seem to receive requests from New Mexico prisons. I mean, I'd send books to any library - I ship items all around the country, I've sent them to the Harvard Medical Library, I've sent books to Thailand and England. But when it comes to prisons, I only get requests from NM.

Curious.

I know that when it comes to borrowing, my system weighs in favor of New Mexico libraries that carry what I'm looking for (physically shorter means normally faster delivery), but I can expand that to search literally around the world. Every library that participates in ILL has their entire inventory (catalog) uploaded to a database in Ohio for central searching for borrowing and lending purposes.

Anyway, prisons have one restriction: they can only take softcover. Paperback and trade paperback. Because hardback cardboard can be made into shivs! Now, aside from a prisoner getting into trouble for having a shiv, they'd also lose their library borrowing privileges for damaging a book! But who knows, maybe a cellmate would do the deed.

Back to the story.

Last week I had a request for a book. It's called Waiterrant, by the author The Waiter. It's a collection of blog posts that won an award. The anonymous blogger took a job as a waiter to help him through a tough patch, and that expected short-term period turned into a seven-year stretch. I subscribe to it through LJ and have enjoyed it for several years.

I had no idea that we had that book in our collection!

I was kind of overjoyed to find it on our shelves. I was also kind of surprised as it was in our cookbook section, and I've been through that section and missed it! No matter, we had the book, I pulled it, and took it back to my office for further processing.

And then it struck me. It's a hardback. And it was a prison that requested it.

I had to pass on the borrowing request and the request went to the next library in the search string. (A search string is a list of libraries that probably have the book on their shelves, they'll all receive the borrowing request in order until someone can fulfill the request or the last library passes, in which case the request is unfulfilled and the requesting library can tell the patron 'sorry, no can do' or they can do another request with different libraries)

Well, there was a somewhat sunnier side to this - I could look up The Waiter's blog and tell him that my library had his book! So I did! I told him of my joy at the serendipity of finding it here, and some of the other cool finds that I've discovered, and my sadness at not being able to send a copy to the prison and why.

He replied that if I send him my library's address, he'll send me a softcover that I can send to the prison!

WOW.

Now, I didn't ask for that, I was considering ordering a softcover. But he's going to send us one!

THAT IS SO AWESOME!

I replied this morning with our contact information. And just now I told my boss about it, she was pretty happy. Free books are a good thing - not that we'll take just any book! But since we already have this book in our collection, it clearly has been judged to have some merit by a previous selection process.

I wonder if he's going to sign it or otherwise personalize it?

I'm off tomorrow, but I'm going to call the prison Thursday morning.