Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 18:18:50 -0500
From: "Patricia Newcomer" <newcomer@iwc.edu>
Subject: RE: Mis-addressing of labels (Was: Claiming Statistics) (Carol Feustel)

Mr. Henderson's faith in the U. S. Post Office is not supported by our
experience in a small college library at a small college in a small town.

For years the college had one street address, but the library's mail was
sorted separately at the local post office and delivered directly to us.
This did not avoid errors.  We sometimes received the local prison's mail
and they ours, and some of our mail did come through the campus post office.
But if it was delayed, it usually was the U. S. Post Office and not our
campus mail system.

In recent years, the post office has demanded that we put a number on the
library and use our own street address.  If we didn't, most items would go
to the campus post office.  So we dutifully had our vendor and others change
our address to the library's street address.  Almost all publications
accomplished this without difficulty.

However, mail is no longer being sorted at our local post office.  It is
being sorted at a regional post office.  After something important in the
mail was seriously misdirected to another point on campus, we complained to
the post office that even though our street address was on addresses, some
of our mail was still being haphazardly delivered to the campus post office.
The response was that if we wanted to make sure that all our mail came to
our address we could not mention the name of the college in our address.  So
much for street numbers.!

Patricia Newcomer, Library Director
Chadwick Library
Iowa Wesleyan College
107 West Broad St.
Mt. Pleasant, IA  52641

Phone:  (319)385-6315   FAX:  (319)385-6324

On Mon Jun 17 2002 Albert Henderson chessNIC@COMPUSERVE.COM wrote:

Moreover, I have seen too many instances of higher
        education institutions running library mail through
        their central mailroom, where it can easily be
        misdirected. There is no reason why the post office
        cannot deliver all mail directly to the library.
        All any library needs is a street address or PO box.