Library Woes: ILLs and Recalls

The library means so many things to grad students. It's a place to scour shelves for dusty old books (50 of which you will check out, haul home, and not return for three years). A place to work for long hours (especially if the library assigns carrels to grad students). A place to eat (since you never actually leave). A place to sleep (made easier if you have a carrel). A place to socialize (because when do you ever see your fellow grad students otherwise?). A place to hide from annoying students (because if there's one place you know they won't be, it's in the library working).

Of course, the library serves two other important functions. Stealing the little bit of hard-earned money each grad student possesses, and accepting sacrifices of small animals on behalf of the interlibrary loan gods.

I don't think there's a single grad student in the world that ends a school year without library fines. Those who are in their comps year often amass fines in excess of $100. The 'recall' function is either evil or a lifesaver, depending which side of the recall button you're on. If you're working on a paper and really need a book someone has checked out, it's amazing, assuming the other person actually returns the book in a timely fashion (or at all). If you're in the thick of your comps and someone recalls one of the key books for your topic, you're pretty much boned. There's no way you can return the book, so you rack up $1/day fines until you make sure you don't have to retake the exams. As if we don't spend enough money on books we actually own, we have to pay a ridiculous amount for books we don't even get to keep. Fantastic.

My current predicament has me on my knees before the shrine of the interlibrary loan gods, praying for swiftness of delivery. This problem is partially the fault of the professors. If they would assign papers more than 2-3 weeks in advance, I would have plenty of time to order the music scores and books I need and have them arrive in enough time to be useful. Every day, I refresh my 'library requests' queue to see if there's been a status update, and every day the words "request sent" stare back at me. This is way worse than tracking a package. Yes, I always worry about $100 worth of Amazon orders going missing, but I worry more about failing a class due to lack of paper resources and being expelled from the program, thus derailing my life for the next 5+ years. Melodramatic? Yes. Yes it is. But it's hard to not see the apocalypse approaching when the semester is ending and you still don't have the score for the piece you're suppose to have analyzed in the next three days. Come on, guys, I even told you which university within 50 miles has the item listed as 'on the shelf'! You can do it, I believe in you!

I think it's time to pray harder. Is ramen, pizza, and beer an acceptable offering for library gods? Somehow I think burning books in their honor would be offensive.