Editorial

Citation

McGrath, M. (2003), "Editorial", Interlending & Document Supply, Vol. 31 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ilds.2003.12231aaa.001

Editorial

This is a bumper issue of ILDS. It has a global reach, covering ILL and document delivery developments in Mexico, India and Denmark. Two articles cover the corporate sector from the global perspective of GlaxoSmithKlein, the newly created pharmaceutical giant and developments at the recently merged OCLC and PICA. We cover the new EU directive as it affects ILL librarians in the UK, and as part of our policy of covering recent developments more thoroughly than perhaps was the case in the past, we include three conference reports from the UK, Iceland and the USA. The National Libraries of Australia, Canada, The Netherlands, Slovenia, Japan and Ireland offer their perspective on delivering their services to remote users. We have the first in a series of articles that we hope will help ILL librarians to understand some of the technical hazards that they face. We round off with two book reviews and the now quarterly Literature Review and Miscellany.

We hope that you find this issue both useful and enjoyable!

Mike McGrath

What's in a name?

Interlending has changed significantly over recent years. For one thing, there is the now ubiquitous term "document supply" to contend with, as well as the confusion between the activities it and interlending imply. Such confusion has, it must be admitted, been exacerbated by those of us who re-named our interlending activities. Thus, the British Library Lending Division became (not too long ago, it seems to me) the British Library Document Supply Centre, while what had been known as the Inter-Library Loans office in my own institution became the Document Supply Unit. The fact is that, except for a few well-versed library users, many of our clients simply did not understand what we meant by this. They understood only too well what is meant by "document supply", but did not understand our use of it.

To our users, a document is a piece of paper, a set of papers, or a report (or their electronic equivalents); it is not a photocopy of a journal article (Xerox or reprint, as most of our users, many around half my age, quaintly insist on calling them), still less a book. This has practical implications: we explain that "document supply" is now an umbrella term, used by information specialists (far less often, "librarians") to mean any activity which obtains, on users' behalf, an item they require but which is not in our stock (or is, but for some reason is not available). This, we continue, includes the activity hitherto known as interlending, but which had become too narrow a term for the activities we now currently undertake. "Why then", they respond, with typical and unnerving perspicuity, "don't you simply call it the Interlending and Document Supply Unit?" "Because it wouldn't fit on the sign over the door … and we had to choose one … and 'document supply' sounds far more complicated, hence professional and modern, than interlending" is probably closer to the truth than many of us would have admitted at the time.

As it happens, our Library Guide (a large, department-store-type index of services and rooms in our rather capacious building) includes "Inter-Library Loans" as an added entry (cataloguing precedents have their uses). Many users perceive this as defeating the object of renaming the unit in the first place. (This journal, of course, does rather better by simply adding "and document supply" to its title; but then a journal does not have to fit its title onto a sign over an office’door.)

Of course, I do not for one moment truly object to the emphasis on document supply. That emphasis was desirable, allowing the implementation of reasonably reliable, relatively user-friendly systems enabling end-users and librarians to locate, request and – increasingly often – receive "documents" electronically. But it is, I think, useful to recognise the truth of the matter, and to begin to redress the imbalance – whether that imbalance is actual or perceptual.

Readers of this journal need no persuading that interlending remains a valuable part of libraries' activities, but it is worth indicating why it should now be given at least equal attention.

For convenience I use my own institution as an example. Broadly speaking, interlending and document supply requests (for all kinds of material) remained roughly steady for a number of years. In the mid-1990s, the number of requests increased dramatically, virtually doubling. This cannot all have been due to increased efficiency on the part of our Document Supply Unit. Rather, there appears to have been a rough correlation between the increase in requests and the increase in online databases available to our users.

Over the past couple of years, however, the number of requests has actually gone down, and we fully expect them to return to early 1990s levels. This, it seems, is a consequence of purchasing swathes of electronic journals, thus satisfying requests for material that, previously, could only be satisfied by sourcing them from other libraries.

An interesting fact, hidden in the general rise in request numbers but evident in the reduction occurring over the past two years or so, is that a small but increasing proportion of our requests is for books rather than journal articles. This "book problem" is, of course, not as susceptible to what we may call "the e-solution" as are journals. Despite the hype (by which, of course, I mean reasoned and properly academic articles on the subject), there seems to be no immediate prospect – even for those of us still with budgets in the black – of being able to buy bundles of e-books capable of satisfying the range of requests now being made. Also to be considered is the fact that, particularly in the UK, there is now a significantly larger number of people studying at higher education level than before, with the result that there has been a broadening out of subject matter now considered to be of academic interest. And, of course, there is the fact that anyone with access to a computer is now able to find information on the widest range of published material in even the most obscure of subjects.

There is, it appears, little we can do about this trend – and, as librarians, we are surely to encourage it. But it does beg a question. How far are our interlending structure and costing models able to cope with a potentially enormous rise in requests for loans? It is a question that, as an editorial writer, I need not answer. But, as someone with more than a small interest in interlending and document supply, it is one which I, with readers of this journal, will need to broach at some stage. Sooner rather than later would seem to be appropriate.

David Orman

(David Orman is Marketing and Communication Manager, Head of Document Supply and English and American Studies Subject Specialist at the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, UK. He has been a member of the RLG Task Force on International Interlending and a director of the NWRLS. He spent 12 years at Manchester Public Libraries before moving to the University of Manchester in 1992.)