Editorial

Citation

(2005), "Editorial", Interlending & Document Supply, Vol. 33 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/ilds.2005.12233daa.001

Editorial

The fortunes of document supply are mixed. The large document suppliers are having a difficult time; hardly surprising as the large publishers are still holding onto the big deals and they are still just attractive enough for many libraries to continue subscribing. However there are interesting and major exceptions. In this issue José and Pacios give a good literature review as well as describing the situation in a Spanish medical library; they show that document supply has increased dramatically along with a big increase in electronic journals. David Reid’s analysis of the current situation in New Zealand shows that document supply dropped dramatically in 1999 but then levelled out – dropping again in 2004; however resource sharing between libraries is growing. This raises the interesting question of “contract or copyright?” Until recently there was considerable, often informal traffic between libraries in copying articles – a study for the British Library in the late 1990s suggested as much as 90 per cent of all copying fell into this category. Publishers do not want customers to share electronic copies between each other, at least not without paying extra and have spent a lot of money finding technical devices to stop it but by also imposing legally binding contracts. The situation in the US remains mixed – with some libraries showing increases and others decreases in document supply. In the UK the trend is relentlessly downward. It would be a foolish person who predicted the outcome of the struggle over the “big deals” – unfortunately it is the job of some in libraries to try to predict it – gladly not me any longer! Burnhill and Law describe the successful development of the UK’s first union catalogue of serials which will greatly improve the quality of the researcher’s access to journal material. Goldner and Gatenby show us recent developments at OCLC designed to facilitate resource sharing and McGoldrick gives us the history of IRIS – one of the very first resource sharing initiatives using electronic transmission of articles launched in Ireland in 1994.

Mary Jackson gives us her take on the future of resource sharing, particularly from the US and Australian perspective. The literature review gives a snapshot of published material on document supply as well as the related areas of resource sharing, big deals, open access and scholarly publishing.

Finally Line reviews a significant book from Thompson – Books in the Digital Age: the Transformation of Academic and Higher Education Publishing in Britain and the United States – a massive and definitive work.