National Library of Australia - Gateways

ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 60 | December 2002


Document Supply Service: Service Points
Document Supply Service Staff
Seasons Greetings from the Staff of Document Supply Service

Welcome to the new look Service Points. This occasional newsletter is produced by the Document Supply Service of the National Library of Australia to provide you with current  information about our services with a view to improving our turn-around times for your requests. In this issue we provide information on Call number prefixes—explaining the material available for loan; describe our premier services, and explain some of the Document Supply Service practices.
—Margarita Moreno

 

Document Supply Service
National Library of Australia
Canberra ACT 2600
Australia



Email: docss@nla.gov.au
Phone:  02 6262 1269 or 02 6262 1421
International + 61 2 6262 1269 or + 61 2 6262 1421
Fax: 02 6273 2719
International + 61 2 6273 2719
Ariel: 203.4.200.194
Web: www.nla.gov.au/dss

This Issue

 


Manager's Message
The Year in Review
Express, Rush, and Priority Services
Prefixes—An Integral Part of Call Numbers
Document Supply Non-Supply Message

 

The Year in Review

The Document Supply Service of the National Library of Australia provides document delivery and interlibrary lending from the extensive collections of the Library including online and electronic electronic databases.

As one of Australia’s largest document suppliers, 2002 has been a busy year, with over 50 000 items supplied from the Library’s Collection. We value providing a reliable and responsive service that meets your delivery and budget requirements and are pleased to report we delivered 99.9 per cent of the material within the ILRS code service level chosen by the requesting library.

To improve services to individuals and businesses we introduced a new service, called Copies Direct, so now copies can be ordered online.

In order to improve current processes and understand our customers better, Document Supply Service undertook two studies. The first looked at the administrative cost of processing charges. It demonstrated the cost effectiveness of using the Kinetica Document Delivery Payment Service, at $0.35 per request, as opposed to invoicing which costs $30. The second study analysed the copies supplied by the Library. It showed that most copies were made from overseas serials with medicine, economics, education and social issues being the most popular subjects. The report is available at <www.nla.gov.au/dss/calsurvey.html>.

We were an active participant in the activities of the National Resource Sharing Working Group and Policy Committee, assisting with the organisation of the very successful National Resource Sharing Forum and Field Day and are now working on the IFLA Interlending and Document Supply conference, which is being held at the National Library in 2003.

We look forward to receiving your requests in the new year.

 

Express, Rush, and Priority Services

Document Supply Service follows the Australian Interlibrary Resource Sharing (ILRS) code and provides three levels of fast service to meet your urgent document demands. These services are known as:

Express     2 hour turn-around time
Rush         am/pm turn-around time
Priority      8 hour turn-around time

Send your urgent requests by fax, email or Kinetica Document Delivery (KDD) system. Requests are checked regularly throughout the day and action is prompt. Since most of our pre-1990 overseas serials are held off-site, occasionally there could be delays in supplying some of this material.

The services operate from 8:00 am to 6:00 pm AEST Monday to Friday.

 

Prefixes—An Integral Part of Call Numbers

Staff in Document Supply Service often have users of our service contacting us to query the call numbers of  items in the Library’s collections. These queries most frequently concern the prefixes, which are added to  call numbers. These prefixes are extremely important in directing requests to the appropriate stack area, which could be on any of five floors in the Library or off-site in warehouses (our warehouses have about 14 kilometres of shelving). The importance of quoting the prefix is because the library has a very complex stack arrangement, based not only on whether material is a monograph or a serial, but also on its age, size, language, and whether it is Australian or overseas in origin. Failure to include these prefixes with the call number can add extra and unnecessary time to the processing of requests.

Generally, these prefixes are followed by either a Dewey number or a running number. Another frequent variation relates to size e.g. q (quarto), p (pamphlet), f (folio), ef (elephant folio). We will always try to lend you the exact item you have requested. We do reserve the right not to lend an item because of its age, rarity or condition.

The following list seeks to identify the most commonly used prefixes and also to give you some information about the prefix and whether the material is available for loan or not. It is certainly not a comprehensive list; the current Stack Directory runs to over 50 pages. Items not for loan may be copied, in accordance with the Copyright Act 1968.

[no prefix]               Mostly overseas material and generally available for loan.
BRA                        Braga Collection. Available for Loan.
Braille                     Braille material. Available for loan.
COE                        Coedes Collection. Available for loan
DESAL                     Collection of DeSalis family. Not available for loan
DNS                        Nichol Smith Collection. Not available for Loan
E                            English Pool. Available for loan
FERG, FER F, FRM     Ferguson Australiana. Not available for loan.
FM                          Film or video held in the Film and Video Lending Service.
                              Available for loan but must be requested directly from VFM
                              Tel: (03) 8663 2200
GMM                        Matthews Collection. Not for Loan
IP                           Indonesian Material. Available for Loan.
JAF                         Ferguson Australiana. Not available for loan.
LUCE                       Luce Collection. Available for Loan.
MAP                        Maps Collection. May be for loan; please enquire.
MC                          Microfiche or Micro card. Available for loan.
mfm                        Microfilm. Available for loan.
MS                          Manuscript material. Generally available for loan.
MT or NMT                MultiMedia Kits. Not available for loan.
MUS                        Music Collection. Generally available for loan.
N                            Legal Deposit copy of Australian publication, monograhs and serial;                                            generally not available for loan. Note that copies designated
N+ or NL                  are available for loan if held.
                              An exception to this rule is Australian microfilm which although
                             
generally labelled
mfmN                      is available for loan.
NX                          Australian hardcopy newspaper; not available for loan but photocopies of
                              articles provided.
OC, OJ, OK               Chinese, Japanese or Korean monograph. Available for loan.
OCS, OJS                 Chinese or Japanese Serials. Not available for loan.
OJS                         Japanese Serial. Not available for loan.
ORAL TRC                 Oral History transcripts collection. Available for loan.
PETH                       Special Collections. Not available for loan.
RB                           Rare Book. Not available for loan. May be copied; please enquire.
RF                           Reference material. Not available for loan. Can be copied.
RMZ                         General Collection Material. Available for loan.
RX                           Newspaper Reference Material. Not available for loan.
S                             Overseas serial item. Not available for loan.
UA                           Uncatalogued Australian Material. Not available for loan.
YY                           Non-Australian monograph material. Available for loan.
                            Overseas published hardcopy newspaper. Not available for loan but
                               photocopies of articles provided.

NOTE: Special Issues, Annuals and Monographs in Series are generally available for loan.

 

Document Supply Non-Supply Messages

When we cannot fill your request, we send you a simple non-supply message to explain the reason. A list of our commonly used non-supply messages is provided for your reference. 

Non-supply Reason        Non-supply Message

Not for Loan                   Not for loan – Legal Deposit Copy
                                     Not for loan – Special Collections (or Reference)
                                    
Not for loan – Restricted Item
                                    
Not for loan – Rare Book
                                    
Too fragile to lend/copy

Not held                         Issue not held
                                    
Issue not yet received
                                    
Volume not held
                                    
Year not held
                                    
Supplement not held
                                    
Vol. 3 (2) 1992 not held
                                    
Not held

In use                            In use
                                    
Volume missing
                                    
Missing

Latest, Vol X(x), XXXX    Vol 3 (2), 1992 latest held (or just use year e.g. 1992 latest held)

Earliest, Vol X(x), XXXX  Vol 3 (2), 1992 earliest held
                                    
Full text not yet available  – 
                                     (may be embargoed)

Other                             Too tightly bound to copy
                                    
On order
                                    
At Binders. Reapply 8–10 weeks
                                    
At Preservation. Reapply 8–10 weeks

ANFAC                           Article not found as cited
                                    
Please check your source of reference

Dup request to 123456    Duplicate to your request
                                     ILL 123456

Quote $XX                     Cost to copy $XX (number of pages may be added). 
                                    
Please resubmit quoting price

More Info, vol/year        More information needed
                                    e.g. year

Copyright                      Unable to copy without appropriate copyright declaration.
                                    
(Then a reason given e.g. whole item, not out of copyright, etc)

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