It's photocopying, not rocket science
Jul. 14th, 2011 10:55 pmWhen I purchase a photocopy via ILL I do not want to see things such as:
1) Your hands
2) Your jewelry
3) 1.5 inch black borders ringing the document
I'll cut a lot of slack when the library is providing the document for free; when I'm paying $40, I expect you to either:
1) Expand the magnification so that the article takes up the majority of the page, not half of it
or
2) Shrink the magnification so that 2 pages are on one.
Either of those tricks will remove the black borders. Black borders which, when there's pictures in the article, guarantees that they will scan in badly unless I spend a lot of quality time with the paper cutter.
I know it can take months & years to learn all the tricks for copying articles quickly & well. However, it only take a few days to figure out how to keep your hands, feet, and black borders out of your requester's photocopies. I've trained quite a few people in the art of photocopying. I promise you, these are easily picked up basic skills.
So, ILL departments, can we please teach the photocopiers the 101 level course? Seriously? Because having to spend an hour fixing the 84 page document you butchered strains my patience. If it wouldn't take another 3-5 weeks to get the article, I'd have contacted you and demanded that you supply a new copy. It really is always better to do it properly at first, rather than try and fix it on the back end.
1) Your hands
2) Your jewelry
3) 1.5 inch black borders ringing the document
I'll cut a lot of slack when the library is providing the document for free; when I'm paying $40, I expect you to either:
1) Expand the magnification so that the article takes up the majority of the page, not half of it
or
2) Shrink the magnification so that 2 pages are on one.
Either of those tricks will remove the black borders. Black borders which, when there's pictures in the article, guarantees that they will scan in badly unless I spend a lot of quality time with the paper cutter.
I know it can take months & years to learn all the tricks for copying articles quickly & well. However, it only take a few days to figure out how to keep your hands, feet, and black borders out of your requester's photocopies. I've trained quite a few people in the art of photocopying. I promise you, these are easily picked up basic skills.
So, ILL departments, can we please teach the photocopiers the 101 level course? Seriously? Because having to spend an hour fixing the 84 page document you butchered strains my patience. If it wouldn't take another 3-5 weeks to get the article, I'd have contacted you and demanded that you supply a new copy. It really is always better to do it properly at first, rather than try and fix it on the back end.
