"How many books do you allow on Reservation ?" or how many claims you allow per member ? this was one of the questions I heard in one of the Library conferences recently. Do you really think that we need to have a limit on how many books one can reserve ?
At least I do not think so , first because Reservation or a Claim is an absolutely harmless activity in the circulation section. No operation in the library affects just because you have excess reservations. Besides , why restrict when the cost of memory is coming down ? Couple of years back when Hotmail was very popular , I always used to get that famous mail "You are exceeding the quota for your mail and you should delete few mails" and there after I had to spent a lot of time determining what to delete and what to retain , besides you could not attach some very big attachments. And then you had Gmail - no restriction on the size of attachment and no restriction on your account size. The result - I have forgotten my password for Hotmail !
I still remember 20 Mb (mind well this is not a spelling mistake , it is Mb and Not Gb) hard disk used to cost 20 thousand rupees once upon a time and now what is the cost of a 80 Gb hard disk ? When the cost of the hardware is going down day by day , why still these restrictions ? Let people reserve , anyway if they do not take the book within a specific time , let the reservation stand cancel !
I also have similar views on lending period for any material but I will write about that tomorrow !
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
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1 comments:
I feel Issue Limit, Reservation Limits are essential for Educational Libraries where resources are less and there are moer takers. so everyone should get a opportunity to read a book (especially new arrivals). If we dont set due dates, issue limits , reservation limits it will be misused and all resources may not be available to everyone.
These ideas will definitely work in corporate world.
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