As a result of the project report to review High Demand/Restricted Loans Options and the subsequent discussion on the implementation of a High Demand Collection, the recommendation was made to change the guaranteed loan period from 14 days to 7 days – see Recommendation 3.7 of the High Demand/Restricted Loans Options report. This recommendation and subsequent necessary policy changes were agreed to by the Library Committee at its final meeting of the year on 20 November 2009.
The reason for this change was to assist in the early return of borrowed materials that were consequently found to be in high demand and required to be placed in the High Demand Collection. The project report signalled this as an issue, it was discussed at the meeting held to look at the high demand service recommendations, and agreed to by LLT at its meeting of 17/11/09. The impact will be that borrowers will be given a standard loan period of 14 days (unless they are staff or postgraduates) of which only 7 days will be guaranteed to be uninterrupted by recalls.
This change has been incorporated into the Library Regulations which are published as part of the UC Policy Library.
Alongside this change it was agreed to make a change to the grace period from 3 days to 1 day. This was also affirmed by the Library Committee.
These changes will take effect from 25 January 2010.
Gail
University Librarian
This seems like a bit of a sledgehammer. Aren’t we suddenly going to get a lot of people caught by the decreased grace period or does this only cover items recalled for Restricted Loan?
This will catch a lot of people – both at the changeover on 25th January and once semester 1 starts. We’ll need significant publicity and will have to inform people as they borrow items as well (and then we’ll still get people caught out, judging by the number of people still trying to get into EL despite our best efforts – and for that matter last night I had to disabuse my brother of the notion that PSL was closed(?!!))
Deborah
There have been many comments from students that it is not worth requesting anything because it takes too long to get material back.
For example from the latest Insync survey from a Central undergradate
“It is annoying when you request a book that you need for an essay, but the book can be out to another person for up to two weeks, max loan period of one week would be better”
The change in loan periods allows for recalls from undergraduates and the reduction to 1 days grace will help. We now have pre-overdue notices and we will send out etxts for recalls. But the changeover does need good publicity as many students bring things back at the last moment before fines start.
The change will be good for some students and harder for others
Anne