Editorial

Citation

McGrath, M. (2009), "Editorial", Interlending & Document Supply, Vol. 37 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/ilds.2009.12237baa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Interlending & Document Supply, Volume 37, Issue 2

It is impossible to avoid mentioning the economic situation. “The worst for 100 years” according to Ed Balls the Schools Secretary in the UK and no mean slouch as an economist. In even blunter terms then, worse than the Great Depression of the 1920s and 1930s. In this context, and at the risk of being bathetic, it is difficult, if not impossible to see how the current serials crisis can continue. Commercial publishers will have to reduce profits and cut prices or face a massive revolt from librarians Now there would be a great headline: “Librarians on strike against greedy publishers”. Shareholders used to 30-40 per cent profits won’t be happy. Open Access publishing will surge as library budgets go down and librarians promote this resource for frustrated users. However this only transfers the pain to the funders who will have to siphon off research funds to pay the publishers author side fees. There will be pressure on Big Deals that are cheap per title but not necessarily cheap per use for low use titles compared to document supply. But costings per title are difficult if not impossible in a Big Deal framework so one suspects the pressure will be to reduce the price of the Deal.

I could lament again how document supply continues to be the invisible service. However only today The Times carried an article extolling the virtues of “the inter-library loan”, (Vine, 2009). The author extols the virtue of the public library as a civic space. Referring to the squandering of tax payers’ money she writes that the library is “where the ordinary reader can claw some of it back”. She relates the story of her friend who wanted two obscure books for research into a novel she was writing. One was only available for £90 from a bookseller in Tennessee, (I had a similar experience of wanting a second hand paperback and only found it in the USA for £120. It’s an odd market place out there). She ordered it through “Audrey” in her local library and received it two weeks later from Southampton; and the second – a week later from Yorkshire. She concludes “For this invaluable service, how much do you think she paid? £3” End of story. And stories like this help to drive the global service of OCLC “WorldCat Local”, the UK’s Unity, and end user services in Denmark, the USA and the UK.

This issue shows the breadth of new services being introduced and old ones still developing. The emphasis is on end user empowerment as exemplified in Jillian Irwin’s article for New Zealand on VDX as well as home delivery in the USA, by Jim Myers, and a further instalment of the Danish end user system from our Danish colleagues. In addition we have an explanation from Ed Davidson of OCLC as to why we still do not have a seamless document supply system. We have a description of perhaps the world’s first international resource sharing and document supply collective from Jeff Gima of the American University in Paris. Rarely do we hear from the field of music document supply but here Liz Hart and Graham Muncy describe the situation in the UK. Then we have another in the series of Stephen Prowse’s round up of what’s new in the UK. And finally your editor provided his usual Literature review.

Good reading!

Mike McGrath