Ball State’s Music Librarian Presents Poster Session about Interlibrary Loan of Music CDs

This past February 15-21, 2009, over 500 music librarians and exhibitors from around the world attended the 78th Annual Music Library Association Conference in Chicago. Ball State’s music librarian, Amy L. Edmonds presented a poster session with examples of the secure packaging used by Ball State’s Interlibrary Loan Services’ personnel to protect music CDs in transit when sharing them with other libraries.

The University Libraries began lending music CDs in July, 2007. Since that time, we have not had any breakage during transit despite the fragile nature of CDs and their jewel cases. This potential breakage is one of the reasons often given by many libraries for not lending CDs.

Many persons who saw Amy’s poster session commented that they were considering loaning their CDs and that this exhibit, Amy’s data, and actually viewing the packing materials, were helpful to them in considering their decision.

Amy studied the approximate 18-month period between late May 2007 and mid-November, 2008 during which time Amy determined that the University Libraries had loaned 380 music CDs to other libraries and borrowed 2,071 music CDs for use by Ball State students and faculty.

Other facts that Music Library Association conference attendees found interesting included:

- Only about 3% of libraries around the country lend CDs.
- Classical music was the most frequently borrowed category of music from Ball State, followed by popular music from before 1990.
- The protective cases we use cost $1.44 each and are reusable.
- We own about 15,900 CDs.
- In the past two years, only one CD booklet has been lost by an interlibrary loan borrower and no CDs have been returned damaged.