Editorial

Citation

McGrath, M. (2008), "Editorial", Interlending & Document Supply, Vol. 36 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/ilds.2008.12236baa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Interlending & Document Supply, Volume 36, Issue 2.

The changes sweeping the library world affect document supply as much as, if not more than, other services. Although there are regional and subject variations, overall document supply has halved in the last six to seven years. The factors contributing to this have been well rehearsed, not the least by this journal. President Bush finally signing the Appropriation Bill into law included the provision for the compulsory deposit of all articles written as a result of NIH funding. As others have pointed out, whilst this is a step change in the volume of material that will now have to be deposited, it will have wider ramifications as other bodies, principally universities, will address this issue more positively. This will have a long-term impact on document supply. Another factor is backfile digitisation, and we carry an article in this issue on JSTOR, the progenitor of all other schemes now active. It is written by its Director, Michael Spinella, and includes many attractive visuals. Document supply finally hits the e-book arena and two authors from CISTI, Bronwen Woods and Michael Ireland, describe the successful e-book interlibrary loan service launched recently by CISTI in conjunction with Ingrams MyiLibrary. Copyright and digital rights management techniques create problems for document supply librarians. The issues are spelt out in a paper given at the 10th Interlending and Document Supply Conference held in Singapore in October 2007, and we publish a revised and updated version of the paper by Harald Mueller from the Max Planck Institute. International document supply is an essential but often complex and laborious process; Jean Bradford from Bristol University in the UK gives a perspective based on a survey of various libraries in the UK. The survey contains some useful insights and conclusions. On a regional scale, cooperation between countries can also be difficult, and where different character sets are in use the problems become pretty formidable. The experience of establishing a document supply service between Japan and Korea are described by Ji Won Lee and Heejung Kim; developed over the past three years, the service has overcome all obstacles and is now thriving. The accurate assessment of document supply costs is not well enough established, and we carry an article by Xia Liu and Ting Lei from China which looks at costs over time in a Chinese research library, comparing them with costs in the USA. Document supply librarians can be forgiven for feeling that their jobs are under threat Anna Vaglio and Manuela d’Urso describe the experience of an Italian university library which suggests ways in which this issue can be addressed. Avril Patterson gives a report on the very successful 10th Interlending and Document Supply conference held in Singapore in October 2007. Joachim Schöpfel writes two reports: one on the 9th Grey Literature conference held in Antwerp in December 2007, and one on the Academic Publishing in Europe Conference held in Berlin in January 2008. Finally, your editor provides his usual review of the published literature over the past three months.

We do hope that there is something for everyone here!

Mike McGrath