Dana warf am Freitag eine interessante Frage in medlib-l auf, die ich hier auch gerne zur Abstimmung stelle (siehe links):
Today I received a request from an employee for a publication from an association for professionals who work with „those who struggle with unwanted homosexuality.“ Since the publication isn’t in PubMed, I ended up at the association’s site in order to get the full citation and so saw what the organization is about.
The employee works in an allied health position that has nothing to do with behavioral health. If it were one of our psychologists, for example, I would think nothing of pulling information and resources on the topic. But since the employee is not in a field where providing any sort of counseling is not part of the job, chances are this is a personal use only request.
In your libraries, where do you draw the line on non-work related requests –especially when it’s not something available at your library? Obviously, it’s not always going to be apparent when someone’s asking for something for their own use, but how do you approach this when you have an inkling that it is? I did have a physician ask for a number of literary review articles one time, and I referred her to another library because that’s not something we have resources for.