By the way

I went into work this morning and had thirty, count them, thirty interlibrary loan requests on our system. 29 were from the same person; 28 were from the same journal, which far exceeds copyright guidelines. If you're new to the profession, or just confused about copyright (aren't we all?) there is an excellent FAQ on the Medical Library Association's website which explains the CONTU Guidelines' 'Rule of Five', which is essentially this: No more than five articles may be requested from the last five years from the same journal within a given year.

So what did I do? I asked the librarian to give me the five she wanted most, with a link to the FAQ, and when she said nevermind, I rejected the requests for copyright compliance problems. Unfortunately I accidentally marked the one that was from another library that way, too, but I sent them the article and an apology and I think they'll resend the request prefixed to me so we can get the statistics right in the system.

I normally get, oh, maybe six ILL requests at once. When I saw all the notifications of ILL requests this morning, my eyes popped out of my head, I'm sure. 'Course, if they'd been from different journals, I'd have filled them all. All of those requests were from the same patron, too. I think that person needs to get a personal subscription to that journal, and that's what I would have told a patron of mine. :)

Anyway, it's just one of those little things you deal with as a solo medical librarian. Thought I'd share.