Textbooks no longer being sent through the InterLibrary Loan program might seem like a new policy for Belk Library, but it isn’t a change from what the library was already doing.
As of January, Belk Library’s policy on ILL, a program that allows libraries to loan each other books internationally, now explicitly states Belk will not request textbooks from other libraries.
This had already been the policy at Belk, but some books ended up slipping through.
“In the past, if a textbook could be borrowed through interlibrary loans, it would be sometimes, but they’re rarely available, which is part of the motivation for changing it,” said Joan Ruelle, librarian at Elon University.
Ruelle started in her current position last summer, so this clarification of library policy comes with Ruelle entering Belk as a newcomer.
“It wasn’t clarified in the policy, so we wanted to make sure that we were consistent and that our message to students was consistent about what we can and can’t do and why that is,” Ruelle said.
One of the main reasons that Belk does not request textbooks through ILL is students need textbooks for an entire semester and the loaning libraries, which set the loan periods, typically want the books back in a month.
“So even if you could get it through interlibrary loans, you weren’t able to keep it for a semester,” Ruelle said.
Ruelle also added it takes a very long time to get textbooks to students because so few libraries buy textbooks and even fewer loan them out. University libraries like those at Duke and the University of Georgia have the same policy on using ILL to request textbooks as Elon.
The entire ILL runs on what Ruelle described as an “honor system,” and fears that students might not return a textbook because they need it for a class helped fuel the decision to not request textbooks through the program.
“Part of the enforcement of this honor system is being considered a ‘bad borrower,’” Ruelle said. “If Elon’s people borrow something and don’t return it in a timely fashion, an institution can decide, ‘we’re not going to loan to Elon anymore.’”
While the library does not buy textbooks, other required books that students might use in a class are carried and loaned out at Belk.
“Sometimes classes use anthologies, and those fill the collection, but they’re not that sort of textbook with questions at the end of each chapter,” said Patrick Rudd, coordinator of access services.
According to Ruelle, the reason for Belk not buying textbooks is that they update and change so frequently, it results in the library having to buy copies on a regular basis.
“We’re trying to build a legacy collection, so it’s not the best stewardship of our resources to be buying 12th editions and 13th editions and 14th editions,” Ruelle said.
And while students cannot find the latest edition of a physical chemistry textbook at the library, a lucky student may be able to find the next best thing to supplement their learning.
“Occasionally we will get a professor donating an old accounting text that will end up in the collection, but that’s something that’s so basic, because accounting principles don’t change that radically,” Rudd said. “So students may, on the shelves, find something that looks like a textbook.”