Looking for information on your library's practices on faculty renewals
Hello library colleagues,
I am wondering if you might be able to answer a few questions relating to Circulation services at your library, or forward this message to the appropriate person.
We are currently investigating whether to institute a limited number of renewals on faculty loans here at Mount Royal College, and are interested in how other libraries handle this issue. Currently, we have a large number of items that are on loan to faculty, some of which have been on loan to individual faculty members for years, with repeated renewals on term loans.
Our reason for revisiting this practice is that not having seen these items for such a long time, we wonder if faculty members know the whereabouts of the items they have signed out. Also, we are concerned about the way in which indefinite loans like this affect the access other users have to library materials.
I would be very interested in know if your library has policy or procedure relating to long-term faculty loans, and would be grateful if you had the time to answer a few questions:
-What is the loan period for faculty borrowers at your library?
-Do you allow renewals on faculty loans? Do you have a limit on the number of times a faculty member may renew an item?
-If you don't have a limit on number of renewals, do you ever require the faculty member to physically bring the item into the library?
-Do you charge fines for faculty overdues?
-Do you charge faculty fines for recalls, if they don't return their recalled item in a timely fashion?
Any other information you had time to share would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks very much,
Alice Swabey
MRC
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Comments
Medicine Hat College's Faculty loan policy
Here are the comments from our circulation supervisor, Barb Banasch.
We really haven’t had a problem with faculty keeping library items.
Our policies are the same for all of our patrons.
Faculty have a 3 week loan period and can renew twice just like everyone else (students, staff and community members). However, if an instructor wants an item for a semester we will allow that with the understanding that if another patron places a hold on it, that they must return it. The instructor could then place a hold on the item so that after it is returned by the borrower, the instructor could have it back.
If an instructor is going to be using a library book as a text book, then we strongly urge them to have their department order a copy of it so that our copy isn’t out for years on end. We explain that Library items are here for everyone’s use and they seem to be fine with that.
We do not charge anyone fines except students who have late Reserve items and therefore we haven’t had to “fine” any faculty member.
Faculty 'renewals'
Faculty have unlimited renewal priviledges at ACAD. However, we have a recall for all library material at the end of each semester. This recall, generally works, however, for those faculty who do not respond, we 'fake' either an interlibrary loan request, or an urgent 'student HOLD'. This generally works, but not always!
Christine