After World War II, when scads of national defense and government spy organizations were being formed, a service was created that would become the most powerful resource in all of America: the Inter-Library Loan System.
This system allows you to get your hands on any book in existence without ever leaving the confines of your dormitory. It’s an amazing tool when you need one last source for a research paper, or if you are just trying to get the next book in the Hardy Boys series.
By Mike Rubino,
Cartoonist/Illustrator
After World War II, when scads of national defense and government spy organizations were being formed, a service was created that would become the most powerful resource in all of America: the Inter-Library Loan System.
This system allows you to get your hands on any book in existence without ever leaving the confines of your dormitory. It’s an amazing tool when you need one last source for a research paper, or if you are just trying to get the next book in the Hardy Boys series.
But how does this global scavenger tool work? How is it that your campus library can receive books within a mere week or two from anywhere in the world? I�ll tell you.
Say you have a 10-page research paper due in two weeks, and the only book Reeves Memorial Library offers on the subject of your paper has been checked out.
You can’tsit around waiting for the text to be returned, nor can you utilize the �Patriot Act� to find out who it is. You spring in to action, log on to Reeves Memorial Library’s Web site and begin the search.
The most powerful ID a book can have is its ISBN. All you need to do is insert this number into the loan system, and instantly it is sent out to a team of radical bounty hunters, dead-set on finding the book’s location.
The team, all of which wear Hawaiian shirts and leather trench coats, immediately scours the tri-county area. Their mission is to recover any clues that may lead them to the book you need. Of course, they have unlimited monetary resources (thanks to the school’s wanton fine system) to pay off any informants that can point them in the right direction.
The bounty hunters are used only for locating the book. Since they can’tbe trusted – because of their blatant disrespect for the written word – Seton Hill University (SHU) employs an ex-Japanese assassin named �Rustled Pages� to retrieve the text. Rustled sneaks into the library and covertly filches the treasure.
Usually, he does this in the dead of night and avoids detection, but you never know when a security guard may stumble on to the scene. If you ever get a book from Inter-Library Loan that is spattered with a maroon substance, just let sleeping dogs lie.
Since ninjas, especially ex-ninjas, aren’tknown for their ability to travel long distances, Rustled hands the book off to an elite team of mercenaries.
This team, which has been code-named �Liberal A-Team,� will go to any length to assure the book’s arrival at Reeves. Usually, after three or four days of covert travel, with the occasional bazooka fire, the Liberal A-Team drives their unmarked van up Seton Hill Drive. This is why it’s imperative that no one illegally parks in those �reserved� spots outside of the library�that’s for the �Liberal A-Team.�
When the book is safely in the hands of our excellent library staff, you receive a phone call telling you to pick it up. While you may not think twice about how this book got from the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh all the way to SHU, be appreciative of what our school goes through to procure it. It’s a violent and heroic road.
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