How a bad citation impacts an interlibrary loan request.
There are thousands of reasons as to why interlibrary loans are slow. But the number one reason that overrules them all is poor citation.
The following is a German article. Let’s review its complication. The interlibrary loan request’s citation didn’t state the volume number (see figure 1). So, we are tasked with eliminating the confusion by retrieving all issues produced within that year and doing online search for cross reference (see figure 2). The first obstacle was the microfiche needed was relocated several drawers down from its original spot. The second obstacle was determining which microfiche to retrieve, as there were 8 volumes, and 80 pieces of microfiche. Each wallet was labelled with the same call number. The page numbers given — pages 803 to 868 — can be found in all eight volumes found in the microfiche (see figure 3). Which doesn’t help the cause.
Human knowledge can surprise you at times. My colleague remembered that one of the new databases had information on the journal — it was called the Gerritson collection of Aletta H. Jacobs. From there she was able to find out the corresponding volume, and it was Volume 1. Sadly, the article was not digitised. However, this shaved off a lot of time spent on searching and sifting through 80 pieces of microfiche. But you can see how tedious and time consuming it was to find all the matching pieces of information before we can supply the requested article.
