A (not quite) farewell Editorial

Citation

McGrath, M. (2011), "A (not quite) farewell Editorial", Interlending & Document Supply, Vol. 39 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/ilds.2011.12239caa.001

A (not quite) farewell Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Interlending & Document Supply, Volume 39, Issue 3

This is my penultimate issue as editor of ILDS. After ten years I feel it is time to pass the baton on. These ten years have been a period of momentous change and I intend to write an article on these changes for ILDS. But just to note here that Maurice Line died last year – the founder of ILDS (but never the editor as a number of obituaries stated). A giant of interlending for many years and an extraordinarily prolific writer. His festschrift, (Interlending & Document Supply, Vol. 33 No. 2) in 2005 contained a bibliography by Stella Pilling which listed 420 journal articles as well as numerous books and reports. As Stella wrote: “Maurice is a one off and as the saying goes, when they made Maurice they broke the mould”, although as a humanist quite what Maurice would have made of the great mould maker and breaker in the sky is hard to imagine. Now he is dead the mould is truly broken. On rereading his festschrift I was reminded of another doyen of librarianship who died this year – Edward Dudley – who wrote a typically humorous piece on Maurice’s pseudonymous writings. Edward died at 91 having been old enough to serve in the Second World War. He retained to the end his radicalism – having been a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) after the war when it still retained some verve and influence.

And your editor also feels the passing of the years at 70, which is not so old these days but time to explore other interests before time runs out. Although as all of you with a good physics background will know there is no physical basis for the passage of time so maybe I will be here forever.

The journal is in rude health. The monthly statistics provided by the publisher, Emerald, show downloads from 974 subscribers of 12,527 in 2003 rising to 31,324 from 1,731 in 2010. And 2011 sees 12,000 downloads by the end of April – 36,000 on an annualised basis. Not bad for such a specialised journal. Is that all down to your editor and the authors? Well not entirely – some nifty marketing by Emerald no doubt helps and my own view is that their new-ish structured abstract has much to do with it. The growth does demonstrate that interlending and document supply remains an essential service that continues to adapt to the changing environment.

The baton will pass to Mary Hollerich and Colette Mak as from Vol. 40. It is particularly timely as this follows the ILDS conference to be held in Chicago in September and Mary is Library Director at Chicago’s Lewis University.

This issue is slightly smaller than normal but my last will be a bumper issue – I promise!

Mike McGrath