The Northern Region said a fond farewell to our regional van system, and I wanted to share a few thoughts because it truly is an end of an era for ILL.
For those of you who are relatively new to interlending, you probably don’t appreciate how the regional van used to form the backbone of the UK’s inter-library loan service. When I joined Durham’s ILL team in 1997 the regional van was going strong, connecting every library in the UK with a seamless delivery service. On my first day I was given my very own, newly printed, copy of the British Library’s Directory of Library codes (yes in those days it was only available in hardcopy). For each library there was an entry with their BL code, address and other contact details as you’re no doubt familiar, but in those days, it also provided details of which regional transport scheme individual libraries belonged to.
If I wanted to send a book to a library in Cornwall, all I had to do was parcel and address it, write the region code in bold red on the parcel (SW in Cornwall’s case), and then pop the parcel into our orange crate. Parcels would be collected from each library twice a week, visiting half the region’s libraries one day and catching the other half on the next. The van would travel around your local area, and in the case of the Yorkshire and Northern Regions, it would end its journey with a trip to Boston Spa every other day.
Our last regional van collection
Books being returned to British Library would be placed into the crate without need for any address or parcel. When you consider the number of books being shipped to British Library in our heyday something as simple as this must have saved an immense amount of staff time and effort over the years. Books being shipped to other libraries would be individually parcelled, making them easy to identify. Items for local region libraries would be delivered directly next time the route took the van past that particular library, and parcels for other regions would be forwarded on to that region’s own van scheme for delivery. By this means a book could be sent from Durham to Cornwall via van within a few days. If parcels ever went adrift, then they would end up in another library. Being the helpful souls that we are, the book would be forwarded on to the correct library within a couple of days, and very little was ever lost or damaged. Weight wasn’t an issue either. I remember borrowing vocal scores for music performances where we might need 120 copies of Handel’s Messiah: this was only possible because we borrowed them through the van. As a means of transporting books, it was unparalleled for the time.
Sadly, like all things, the service has been the victim of financial cuts. In 1999/2000 the South West was the first of the regions to lose their regional van service due to budget cuts. Other regions stopped their services with little or no warning throughout 2001/2002 until only Yorkshire and the Northern Region were left. (I have to own up here that I didn’t record in my ILL annual report when the Yorkshire regional van ceased operation, but the Northern Region has been the last man standing for a number of years now.) We nearly lost the Northern Region van in 2008 when MLA North East withdrew its support, but at the last moment the running of the service was taken over by Newcastle Public Library and the transition was seamless. Being reasonably close to Boston Spa the remaining Yorkshire and Northern Regional van services were the last to go because libraries could continue to use them for returning British Library books.
ILL borrowing has been declining for years whilst at the same time service costs have spiralled, so the cost per item rocketed. The regional van had a social value for the local libraries, so the northern universities effectively subsidised the service for the benefits of the other libraries in the region. The COVID pandemic proved to be the final nail in the coffin. After ceasing physical operations during lockdown, libraries were slow to resume their inter-lending services and the number of items being transported round the region was at an all-time low, just as petrol prices went through the roof. Newcastle Public Library finally pulled the plug in 2022, emailing us in May to say that the service was no longer financially viable and that the last collection would run on 23rd June 2022. There were a few misty eyes at this announcement, but in truth we knew that the service had been running on borrowed time for a long while now.
In its day the regional van was a superb service, easy to use and completely in keeping with the spirit of co-operation that makes inter-library loans possible. The regular drivers gave the service that personal touch and it was lovely to see familiar faces week on week. For those of you who have never used the regional van it must seem like an odd thing to lament: the delivery man? Really? But not too long ago the regional vans formed the backbone of UK interlending. For those old hands like me seeing the last part of this once-great service finally stop, it does truly feel like the end of an era.