Hi, Annissa --

I would not recommend interlibrary loan (ILL) as a substitute for getting a textbook needed for a semester-long course.  ILL also does not take the place of a personal copy of a classic work which a professional is apt to refer to over and over again during his or her career. While a few  members of Museum-L might be willing to sell their copies of the books sought, most would want to hang on to their copies.  There are better places to look for used copies --  amazon, barnes and noble, ebay and abebooks.com are all good places to check for used textbooks and scholarly items.

As a museum librarian who set policies for the loan of our materials and was involved in borrowing items from other libraries for use by museum staff, the term of the loan is established by the lender, not the borrower.  In addition, renewal requests are not automatically approved.  If a staff member or volunteer needs the item or another institution requests it, we refused renewal requests.  On occasion we've recalled  loans early because someone on our staff urgently needed it and that took priority over a borrower from University X..  

Also, note that loan periods include the time it takes for the item to get to the borrower and back to the lender.  The likelihood of a person actually having an item in hand for 4 weeks or more is very small.  About the only time such a situation would happen would be if the item came from a library's remote storage facility or a multi-campus or system-wide consortium that sets special lending terms for member libraries.

ILL, or library copies in general, work best for items needed for research that will be completed in a short period of time (2-3 weeks).  Photocopying of entire works that have been published as recently as both books you mentioned is illegal; even if breaking the law doesn't bother a person, the damage to the spine and binding of a book when it has been copied from cover to cover ought to.  

The price of textbooks is burdensome to most students but consider both items investments in the career in the museum field that you plan to pursue.


Judy Turner
Whitefish Bay, WI

--- On Mon, 9/1/08, Diana Welsh <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> From: Diana Welsh <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: [MUSEUM-L] In need of museum textbooks
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Date: Monday, September 1, 2008, 1:09 PM
> To Annissa, 
> 
>  
> 
> Have you checked with your university library?  If they
> don't have the
> books you are looking for maybe they can get them from
> another library
> through inter-library loan.  I believe when I was in grad
> school I was
> able to check books out for about a month and if no one
> needed it after
> that I just renewed the books.  Worth a shot and no money
> spent.  


      

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