Delivery 

Regional delivery services are designed to facilitate statewide interlibrary loan, resource sharing and reciprocal borrowing through time-efficient and cost-effective methods for the physical and electronic delivery of library materials and information between a region's member libraries.

The regional delivery services also tie in with a cross-state delivery that makes it possible for every regional member library to send and receive their library resources with any Massachusetts Regional Library System member. Library materials for the Boston, Metrowest, Northeast, Southeast, Central and Western Regions may be sent through cross state delivery.

The Boston Public Library funds the Statewide Delivery Program that provides the overnight delivery service between all six Regional Library System's headquarters. A Massachusetts Delivery Routing Directory is maintained by the Boston Regional Library System.It is an online listing of all libraries in the statewide regional library system that receive delivery and contains all relevant information needed to fill out delivery slips including name of library, routing slip and sub-routes.The directory is updated periodically to track changes, additions and corrections.

A Statewide Delivery Committee was appointed at the November 3, 2005 MBLC Board Meeting, following a statewide delivery summit held on September 20, 2005. Charged to review and clarify a list of priorities that came out of that summit, the Committee held seven meetings between November 27, 2005 and October, 3, 2006. Five Subcommittees worked on the following issues: labeling, sorting, cost of delivery, regional member library responsibilities and communications. The committee worked by consensus and came to agreement on a best practices document, Resource Sharing and Best Practices (also in MS Word), as as well as a recommendation regarding funding efforts to automate the delivery process. This document and recommendation were presented to and accepted by the MBLC Board at the November 2, 2006 meeting.

The goal of the best practices document, "Resource Sharing and Best Practices," is to provide information that will lead to the most efficient and best use of the considerable time and effort that library, regional and network staffs invest in the service each day.Recognizing that regional variations may preclude the carrying out of these best practices in full, those practices that are required by all regions are designated with a leading asterisk "*."

The Regional Library System Web sites have detailed information regarding the delivery services they offer to their members:
 
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Page last updated on 09/19/2008