Oh, oh, I thought of a new and better poll.
How old were you when you filled out your first inter-library loan request?
As always, boost because science.
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If "inter-library loan request" means what I think it means, I chose 17+
When I got my library card (~11y), borrowing books from another town's library was not allowed. I think I was well into adulthood when you could borrow from another town's library,
@GeePawHill Not sure it qualifies, but all public libraries in Ireland are now on a single system, so you can request any item from anywhere in the country. (You can also borrow any item from anywhere and return it anywhere else and they just figure it out). This started about 8 or 10 years ago, which puts me comfortably into the adult age range.
@GeePawHill I voted 'never' but that's because for as long as I've been a library-goer I've lived in places with lots of books in the local libraries, way more than I could read my way through. I did spend one year abroad when I read a number of genres I wouldn't normally have touched because they were what was available in the local library in English. Maybe ILL would have helped there.
(It's possible my parents filed some ILLs for me way back when, but I was oblivious to such things.)
@GeePawHill
In college, because I needed a book for my thesis which wasn't available locally.
However my kid (now 13) has utilized ILL already for a couple of years, because it's so easy to do online: you just make a request, pick the closest library for pickup and then wait. And it's free of charge among co-operating libraries.
The public library system is my go-to example when my kids ask why people have to pay taxes.
@GeePawHill @bobthomson70 my little boy was 4 when he did.
@GeePawHill I was 8 years old, and wanted to loan an English study book for children. But the book was already in loan so they had to put the request to the main library for another copy.
Living in Finland, our mother tongue is phonetic, so the librarian told me what I needed to write on the request card: OK English. But being 8 and only speaking Finnish, what I wrote was "Oukei inlis", which was what the librarian told me.
@GeePawHill Although I've used libraries regularly since I was tiny, I only started making requests in the past year.
@GeePawHill I remember looking for the score for Disney songs. It wasn't part of the local library, but we got from somewhere else. Mind blown!
I think the librarian later regretted showing me this, because I used it a lot!😄
@GeePawHill The librarians helped with it. You didn't have to fill in anything, they just checked if the book was available elsewhere and put in a request.
@jens Interesting. Mine--God how I love and honor those women--taught me how to fill out the form.
@GeePawHill Different countries, different systems, I guess. Mine helped me navigate the paper card index. I would like to remember the indexing system, but unfortunately, that's gone.
@GeePawHill around 13, I guess.
The Cuckoo's Egg – Clifford Stoll
@GeePawHill info on Zheng He was hard to come by.
@GeePawHill wasn't until i was 21 or 22 i think because it was for my CS senior capstone project in college. at the time it felt like it was a serious business hardcore academia thing to do and not something i'd be likely to do again (i've since done it again a few times to much less ceremony)
@GeePawHill Pretty sure I was in college 🤔
I'm thinking 7th grade, so 13, cuz up until that time I wasn't allowed to use the nearby juco library, and that's where I found out such a thing was possible.
ILL is the coolest fucking thing *ever*, if you're a dork.
@GeePawHill My stroke of library fortune was when my Mom had a quiet talk with the librarian, and my 11 year old borrowing limit was quietly doubled. I didn't know such a thing was possible.
@GeePawHill this reminded me of the first time the librarian taught me about ILL as an 8-10 year old. Just looking for the next Isaac Asimov book. But it blew my mind.
@jeffschmitz Right? *Any* book. *Any* where.
