Sunday, February 08, 2004

Welcome back!

We have an interesting policy here at the Widener Circulation Desk - every patron can renew their books five times online before they have to come back in and have them renewed in person. I always wondered why there should be a limit on remote renewals, missing of course the obvious loophole that a patron could theoretically lose a book and avoid paying for its replacement indefinitely by continuing to extend the item's due date by another loan period. But at least the number of online renewals permitted makes sense: as most patrons get a book for 28 days at a time, allowing five renewals gives someone the item for more or less the entire semester, so long as no one else places a hold or recall on it.

But here's where it gets weird - some of our patrons (faculty and "officers", the somewhat curious term we use for high-level staff, making working at Harvard seem like a landlocked episode of the Master and Commander series) receive semester loans, which means with the five-renewal policy they can spirit a book away to their office or apartment for three years before having to bring it back in! As we are approaching one of the two semester loan due dates - one is Feburary 10th, the other September 10th - more and more people are coming to the desk with shopping bags or even suitcases full of books that left the stacks all the way back in 2001 and only now have hit their renewal limit. Most of them we won't see again until 2007! I wonder if I'll still be here by then...

No comments: