The Libraries and Information: East Midlands Partnership Agreement
Libraries and Information: East Midlands (LIEM) is a co-operative organisation which provides a framework for mutual help to libraries in the East Midlands. It also provides a voice for members in the inter-regional and national fora of inter-library co-operation. It is a Registered Charity.
1. Responsibilities of the Libraries and Information: East Midlands Council
- To safeguard, maintain and develop the Constitution.
- To ensure the financial viability of EMRLS.
- To ensure that an EMRLS representative is present at all relevant inter-regional and national groupings where the interests of members should be advocated, as determined by EMRLS Council.
- To collate and analyse relevant Regional statistics of interlending on behalf of the members.
- To generate the ideas and the energy which are required to plan for an active, appropriate future for co-operation in the Region and beyond.
- To ensure that a system is maintained and developed to provide mutual access to Members' catalogues and holdings details.
- To provide a remote enquiry system for any Member wishing to obtain holdings details for any item. Members using this service will be charged per item at a rate determined by Council.
- To provide overall management and direction of the post of Regional Librarian EMRLS.
- To provide regular briefings to members on the activities of the Council in areasrelevant to the Constitution.
- To organise training initiatives which are relevant to inter-library co-operation.
2 Responsibilities of each member library
- To arrange for access to the Member Library's catalogue and holdings data for all other members. Members are expected to achieve this by arranging for all stock to be notified to the Region's union catalogue. Any alternative to this would need to be agreed specifically by EMRLS Council, for instance arrangements for dial-up access only.
- Where the Member's stock is notified to the union catalogue, amendments to this data referring to additions and deletions must be notified quarterly, or more frequently at will. From April 1999 Members will need to provide these updates to the union catalogue in electronic form only. The agreed specification for updates to the union catalogue is in Appendix 2 which is attached.
- To provide to EMRLS for publication a written statement of policy on the extent to which reference, lending and enquiry services would be provided to a registered user of another Member's Library. It is intended that this statement should be made available to Members and to the general public for their guidance.
- To consider the loan of any item of stock to other Members on request.
- To act on any request from an EMRLS Member for a photocopy or for the loan normally within 5 working days and always within 10 working days of receipt. To ensure that for each request received from another member one of the following actions is completed within 10 working days:
(a) despatch item
(b) despatch request to next Library on a request rota
(c) report ;agreed to loan, arrangements for despatch in hand"
(d) report "agreed to loan in principle but item not currently to hand" and explanatory detail, eg "on loan till....", "overdue", "missing", "at binding", "remotely located"
(e) report "decline to lend"
(f) report "not in stock"
- Urgent requests received from any other member should be considered and acted on within one working day of receipt. The actions should be as per 2.5a)-f) above.
- To provide a written statement of library policy on:
(a) inter-library loan periods
(b) charges for inter-library loans
(c) charging for lost or damaged items
- To provide a written notice of any period of extended closure of the library.
- To submit to EMRLS Secretariat a monthly report of the number of items borrowed and supplied through inter-library loans, and the number of requests abandoned, etc, according to the nationally agreed format.
- To consider participating in any research or development project initiated or recommended to EMRLS Council. Recent examples of these are the Review of Reserve and Special Collections and the Newsplan initiative.
Signed:
Chair of EMRLS
21/1/2002
Chief Librarian
16/1/2002
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Updating the union catalogue
The region will be asking for this data in electronic form only from April 1999.
The specification for ISBN notification is
- Include books only ie adult fiction, adult non-fiction, and children's books;
- Include reference copies;
- Exclude copies that are missing (if your system allows);
- Exclude copies that are long overdue (if your system allows); and
- Exclude talking books/story cassettes.
This specification was agreed by EMRLS Regional Council at the January 1998 meeting.
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