The illogic of the interlibrary loan

Submitted by David on Fri, 2009-06-12 10:52
  • Cost of book Dave wanted to read on Amazon.ca: $13
  • Interlibrary loan's (direct) cost to me: $0
  • Charge of the remote library to my library: $15
  • Add in cross-Canada shipping of the book in question: ???. I'll guess $5

In such cases wouldn't it make a whole lot more sense for the library to say: "Dave, we'll just buy you the book. It's cheaper that way". But no, that would make too much sense.

Or perhaps the remote-library charges are somewhat artificial, getting cancelled out by reciprocal loans? (In this case I kind of doubt it; the book was obscure enough that the closest location that it could be small was in a relatively obscure Ontario library).