Hi Luis,

Well in the first place nobody said that EVERYTHING is available through inter-library loan on EVERY library. The suggestion was to try your local library - a research technique that has worked quite well for me over the last few years.

Sometimes there is a charge to the person requesting the item and sometimes there isn't. The last time I asked for the Washington Times for March 1942 (something quite RARE here in North Carolina) my local library charged me $5.00 - a perfectly reasonable fee considering I had no other way to get the item (a roll of microfilm). I was looking for newspaper accounts of the sinking of my dad's ship - and I found them.

The point about what is free or not is unimportant as your library will tell you if there is a fee you must pay at the time you request the item. The suggestion was to try the local library - no guarantees that they could get the item or that it would be totally free for every person and organization involved were made - obviously there will be postage involved and at least the time of 2 library employees (one on each end) twice as the item has to be returned once you have viewed it.

Of course unless you know the person involved and know for a fact that that person knows exactly what they are doing (something it isn't likely that you know in this case) then your assumption that "Of course (s)he knew! It was that THERE WAS NO copy available in that library system." is just speculation on your part and shouldn't be stated as a fact. I have run into some quite exceptional Librarians and some inexperienced ones that really didn't know what they were doing or just didn't care. The experienced, competent librarians had to be inexperienced at some point and it is certainly possible in this case. Additionally the statement wasn't that the person didn't know what they were doing - it was "I'm not exactly sure if she knew what she was doing...". Given the extremely poor service in general now in many organizations none of us are sure the people helping us with things actually know what they are doing. I routinely hear clerks in stores (and sometimes technical support people) say things about computers that are totally wrong (its a business I have been in for several decades now). At the grocery store today another customer asked the person checking out my groceries which isle toothpaste was on. She didn't know but asked one of the assistant managers which promptly told the customer the wrong isle! I could see the correct isle from where I was standing and had just purchased something from it. Both were probably new to that store. In this day and time service sucks just about everyplace I purchase things. Ask a physician a medical question about something that isn't his field and you had better not stake your life on the answer. You can be certain he is better educated and trained in his field than a Librarian in in his so this isn't an issue of education and training or even raw intelligence for that matter. It is a matter of experience and attitude. If there is one thing learned from the Viet Nam war its "question authority".

At any rate inter-library loan is a great research tool and not well known by novice researchers. You may very likely not be charged directly for the service and if you are, the charge (in my experience) will be very modest. In any case if there is a charge & you consider it too high then go elsewhere - no big deal. I have never been disappointed with inter-library loan and you can get all kinds of RARE items like the ones I have gotten that way through it. I doubt anyone will try to get Britain's crown jewels that way unless of course you are implying that a Librarian would.

Perhaps you should read the posts you reply to a bit closer and try to assume that they are from people trying to be helpful by sharing what they have found out with others that might benefit from it. Your posts don't seem to me to fall into that category though. At any rate in my opinion the posts in question here didn't rate your aggressive response.

Also note how irritating it is when someone includes some whole words that are capitalized in a sentence. It is equated with shouting in a normal conversation and that isn’t very polite and is almost sure to get you a response you won’t like. There is emphasis and then there is EMPHASIS!

If you want to continue this feel free to e-mail me as this forum isn't the place for the discussion that will follow. You might also want to take a close look at the forum rules (see the link at the top of this page).

Regards,

Ken Dunn