The University of California Libraries: A Plan for Development (1977)

94 The University of California Libraries
same time reported by similar studies in other parts of the nation.
The problem, as discussed below, is largely the requirements of
the national interlibrary loan code, and the fact that (as one writer
put it) "meticulous attention is paid to the minutiae of bibliographic
form." 14
Fortunately most of the steps outlined in the previous section
have improved the response time systemwide as well as within the regions.
In addition to the steps taken, however, two others are
needed: TWX should be used for all requests, regardless of region,
and United Parcel Service should be used instead of the U.S. mails.
UPS, in fact, should be used for all inter-campus lending traffic
between any two campuses not in the same region, not just between
Berkeley and Los Angeles and the Northern and Southern regional
facilities discussed in Chapter X. A committee of the Library Council
which investigated this possibility estimated that the total cost
of systemwide use of UPS would be $14,000, a small price indeed to pay
for the improvement it would provide in the availability of resources.
In order to prevent loss of materials and to make materialhandling
as efficient as possible, specially-designed and speciallymarked
containers should be used for delivery of all inter-campus
library materials.
The CSUC system has recently devised a separate system of request
transmission and materials delivery and, through the initiative
of the CSUC Learning Services Development Division, formal arrangements
are being negotiated to tie the UC inter-campus system and the
CSUC system together at both Berkeley and Los Angeles.
Other agreements are in effect for expedited delivery service
between UC campuses and Stanford University, the University of
Southern California, California Institute of Technology, and the
Huntington Library in San Marino.
14 Lura Gibbons Currier, Sharing Resources in the Pacific Northwest,
Washington State Library, 1969, p. 24.