The MetroWest Daily News – Framingham,MA, Reports A huge spike in demand has swamped a regional library network this summer, forcing organizers to suspend the sharing of music, movies and books on tape until workers can catch up with orders.
The delay should be temporary, said Bill Talentino, vice president of the Minuteman Library Network, which includes 35 towns plus several colleges west of Boston.
neighbors
I’m in a neighboring system and we’re running into the same problem though we haven’t gotten to the point of limiting what people can request. I find it hard to believe people haven’t put up a big fuss yet.
“One thing that would help is for other libraries to meet the demand of their own community,” Gilchrist said.
That’s simply not possible any longer. I believe Minuteman is larger then our system and some of the libraries have much better funding but like us the range of libraries in the system is large. The small libraries simply can’t afford to purchase everything out there (neither can the large ones really) and the fact is with online catalogs people are much more aware of what they can get their hands on. The idea of going without is becoming dated. And i’m not even going to get into the clash of philosphies over what libraries should be buying in the first place.
“The way it used to work, if your library owned the item, it would wait until one from your library became available,” Gilchrist said. “Now it just selects whatever one is returned first in the network, regardless of where it is located.”
The Minuteman group is well aware of the problem, said Talentino, who hopes something can be done. Unfortunately, he said, the software is not made for a group like Minuteman.
“The software tends to be designed for networks somewhat different than ours,” Talentino said. “A lot are designed for county systems or libraries with a tremendous number of branches. Not one like ours with 41 distinct entities.”
Ditto. But keep in mind this mainly applies to things like bestsellers and other popular items that most libraries are likely to have. There’s still the bulk ILLing from patrons on stuff like music and movies. It will make a big dent if the problem is solved but not necessarily be a cure all.
Online checkout of digital audio books (and maybe eventually music) will help in the longrun. And once TV ‘On Demand’ hits it stride things will quiet down considerably.