Libraries without Walls 7: Exploring “Anywhere, Anytime” Delivery of Library Services

Citation

McGrath, M. (2009), "Libraries without Walls 7: Exploring “Anywhere, Anytime” Delivery of Library Services", Interlending & Document Supply, Vol. 37 No. 2, pp. 112-112. https://doi.org/10.1108/02641610910962364

In 1995 the title “Libraries without walls” for the first conference must have seemed revolutionary. Reading the library literature today it is sometimes hard to remember that libraries do actually contain hard copy “stuff” within the walls. This seventh international conference was again organized by the Centre for Research in Library and Information Management (CERLIM), Manchester Metropolitan University. It took place in a location decidedly outside the library walls on the island of Lesvos in the Aegean Sea. Like the curate's egg – it is relevant in parts for readers of ILDS. However, it reminds me once again of how document supply is the invisible service. After all you would have thought from the title of the proceedings that interlending and document supply would have been seen as an important service in the concept of a library without walls. The only chapter which refers explicitly to document supply is one that describes the Developing Library Network (DELNET). It connects “more than 1,150 libraries in 30 States and Union Territories in India and six other countries”. ”Reaching the unreachable in India; effective information delivery service model of DELNET and the challenges ahead”. One of its most popular services is the “inter‐library loan/document delivery service”. The union catalogue is described as well as other databases and then the services provided.

Other papers address issues that directly impact document supply.

Institutional Repositories (IRs) are both a threat and an opportunity for document supply librarians. Increasingly free access to the published version of articles deposited in IRs will contribute to the decline of document supply but navigating to these resources will often require the support of librarians and who better placed than document supply librarians to provide such support with their ability to uncover resources not reached by others? However, there are a number of constraints on depositing articles which are identified in a paper which deflates some of the hype surrounding this issue. “Publishing, policy and people: overcoming challenges facing institutional repository development”. Some feedback obtained from consultation at Manchester Metropolitan University – is that: “The repository is not driven by the needs of the academics … Self‐deposit takes too much time and effort … Sorting out copyright is difficult … Citation and versioning are not sufficiently clear” – one researcher commented – “I don't want people to cite a published paper by giving the institutional repository address rather than the published reference in The Lancet”! These are serious points but they will be overridden by the mandates that are being imposed both by research funding bodies and more recently universities themselves. Still perhaps “overridden” carries too harsh a connotation – as the authors point out, recent research established that – “81 per cent of authors would willingly comply with a requirement by their employer or research funder to deposit copies of their articles in an open archive”.

The issue of access to raw data is creeping up the agenda. Many see this as an unalloyed advantage of electronic networks. However, the concerns of the researchers are well described by Christine Borgman in her chapter “Disciplines, documents and data: emerging roles for libraries in the scholarly information infrastructure”. – “Scholars are rewarded for publication, not for data management … Describing and tracking data for one's own use and that of current collaborators is far simpler than documenting them for use by unknown others  …  Scholars collaborate, but they also compete to be the first to publish a finding or a new interpretation … ” and finally “there are concerns about intellectual property”. The issue of copyright crops up in both chapters and will be only too familiar to document supply librarians.

Although disappointingly thin on matters that directly concern readers of ILDS there are nonetheless some very useful papers presented here.