I. Purpose.
(1) Prompt service. (a) The book, if purchased, might have to come from a greater distance and so cause delay. (b) The book, if out of print, would take time to find or might not be possible for an agent to locate for a very long time, if at all.
(2) Economical service. (a) The library that loans the book. Rather than have a book, that has cost time and money, stand idle on the shelves, the library owning it would be better repaid for the expenditure if the book were used by more people. (b) The library that borrows the book. Rather than purchase a book which would seldom be requested, it would be better to borrow it, and use one's funds and time and shelf room for books that would be in constant demand. For example: take two special lines of library service here in California at the present time.
(1) Books for the blind. Aside from a small collection in the San Francisco reading room and library for the blind for the local blind, and the small collection for the students in the Berkeley California institute for the education of the blind and the deaf, the state library has almost all the books and magazines used by the blind of the state. It would not be economical for other libraries or individuals to undertake to carry on this work, so the state library discourages anyone else buying such books and undertakes to furnish them to anyone needing them. If many want to read certain periodicals they are duplicated several times and sent in order to the various blind borrowers.
(2) Medical books and periodicals. The Lane medical library in San Francisco and the Barlow medical library in Los Angeles have perhaps the best medical collections in the state. The state library of course has and is building up a collection in this line for the use of the whole state, but it often borrows from the first two mentioned.
II. Scope.
There will be no limit, apparently, to the scope of inter-library loans in California. Each library at present makes an effort to loan anything asked of it by any other library. For example, the state library buys no fiction, but from the union catalogs of the county free libraries which is located at the state library, it is possible to tell where a certain book is located and to direct one to the other for a rush request of fiction.
Rare books are loaned by library to library and used by the borrower at the library.
Newspapers it is not necessary now to loan as by cameragraphing the needed extract from them, the expense, wear and tear, and risk of such loans are avoided. The same applies to articles in unbound or bound periodicals. Cameragraphing an article in a periodical also makes unnecessary the duplicating of certain periodicals because of some especially needed article. Cameragraphing is also economical in that it keeps the files in the library and so more material is always available for reference use.
Even reference books, however, are loaned or borrowed frequently to meet certain needs. So the scope is of necessity a matter of judgment of the particular case in question.