Hood College may be seceding from the Maryland Interlibrary Consortium (MIC) after the Dec. 1 loss of the Loyola Notre Dame library and the potential spring loss of Washington Adventist Library from the consortium group.
The Loyola Notre Dame library (LNDL) joined the University System of Maryland and Affiliated Institutions library consortium on July 1, 2016. As a result, LNDL is withdrawing from MIC.
According to Tobin Peterson, the Interim Director of Hood’s library, due to LNDL’s exit, Washington Adventist library may leave the consortium as well because they would rather move to a newer integrated library system (ILS). According to MIC’s bylaws, all members of the consortium must use the same ILS, which is a program from 2002, and Washington Adventist wishes to upgrade to a newer system.
“Washington Adventist will stay throughout the spring semester and then come July 1, 2017, it’s just going to be Hood and Stevenson,” Peterson said.
MIC’s annual costs for Hood total to approximately $210 thousand for services including a PT systems librarian, the courier service, mutual database acquisitions, integrated library system, and incidentals.
If Washington Adventist library remains in the consortium, Hood may attempt to reduce costs by limiting the courier system between libraries. Currently, the courier runs every day, Monday through Friday, but Hood may reduce the service to Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, meaning that rather than receiving books within a day, there may be a two day wait.
“With the three remaining schools, we’re looking at a $20 per transaction cost to get a book from one of those libraries,” Peterson said. “We can get a book through interlibrary loan (ILL) for just the cost of postage.”
For the Hood community, LNDL leaving the consortium will have a huge impact. “It’s quite a blow to MIC because Loyola is the largest library in the group, so most of the borrowing is done by them and most of the lending is done by them,” Peterson said.
“It’s going to be a very significant problem because 90% of what I see students doing in the way of borrowing from the consortium comes from Loyola as they have the best collection, particularly in the humanities,” Mark Sandona, the chair of the English department, said.
In 2015, students, staff, and faculty requested 932 books from Loyola compared to the 1,665 books requested in 2012. Over a 5-year period Hood has requested approximately 57% fewer items from Loyola.
Logan Samuels, a senior a Hood who is working on a departmental honors thesis about the literary fall of Lucifer, is worried about how the changes in the library will affect her research. “I’ve been doing work since June with books from Loyola, which are due this week, on Dec 1, so I basically have to find a way to get those books again, hopefully from our consortium or through the interlibrary loan system,” Samuels said.
Candice Carrington, a junior at Hood, is a student worker at the Hood library’s circulation desk, and she has heard a lot of concerns from students checking out books from the consortium.
“A lot of students need the books to finish final papers,” Carrington said. “They need them until Dec. 5 but they have to return them by Dec. 1.”
According to Peterson, in addition to changing the due dates for all books borrowed from Loyola, any book from Loyola will be considered lost after 14 days if it is not returned. Any student who does not return a book before Dec. 15 will be charged for the book, as Hood will need to pay Loyola for the loss.
MIC was created July 16, 1997, and Hood was one of the founding members. “I can remember when we didn’t have the consortium, so we’ll go back to the time when we would have to plan a couple weeks in advance,” Sandona said.
“With the courier we get books within one day, whereas with ILL, the typical turnaround for a book is about eight days,” Peterson said. “The biggest impact on students will be that they need to plan more ahead.”
In regards to the ILL service, Samuels said: “It really depends on the individual book. I know I used ILL the other day for something from University of Maryland and I got it within two days, but I put in a request for another book two weeks ago and they’re still searching for it.”
Loyola books will still be accessible through the ILL system, and the books can be viewed through OCLC WorldCat, which is available through the Hood databases.
Samuels also expressed worry over the changes occurring within Hood’s library. The Hood library is going to be transitioning to a learning commons which may reduce the collection of books by almost 50%.
“Surveys still show that students prefer print books, but the numbers don’t show it,” Peterson said.
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