Editorial

Citation

McGrath, M. (2007), "Editorial", Interlending & Document Supply, Vol. 35 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/ilds.2007.12235caa.001

Editorial

Document supply as such may be on the decline, graphically illustrated in this issue in the last of a three-part article from French researchers (Pascal Bador et al.) based on the vast amount of data generated by INIST – the French document supply agency. However, I am reminded of the old marketing aphorism – people buy drills because they want holes, not because they want drills. People use document supply because they need information, not because they want document supply. And so another aphorism from marketing comes to mind: turn threats into opportunities – in my view one of the simplest and most powerful tools of management. Searching for “stuff” used to be simple – either it was in a catalogue or it wasn’t. If not then it was, to all intents and purposes inaccessible, except by chance. Now Google will find most stuff, but can you get it? Eric van der Meulen describes how the European Library is grappling with this problem.

Enter the rebranded document supply librarian. Who better to help find the way through the complex virtual environment in which floats more and more “stuff”? Helped perhaps by flexible tools such as that described by Ahmed Rahali and Thomas Bausenwein from FIZ Autodoc in Karlsruhe. Perhaps the most difficult material to access is theses. However this situation is being transformed by new electronic tools. The long gestation of a UK national service has finally come to fruition and by the time that you read this, EThOS, described by Neil Jacobs and colleagues, should be operational. Researchers will be able to download theses without charge – the costs being covered by institutional subscriptions and grant funding.

However, in many areas of the world access to any sort of material not held in the local library is difficult. The situation in China, where document supply provision lags behind that country’s explosive development in recent years, is described by Conghui Fang.

This issue also carries the second part of Stephen Bensman’s article on Donald Urquhart, describing his seminal contribution to the development of document supply in the UK and internationally. Staying in the UK, Christine Urquhart (no relation) and colleagues describe the complex business of maximising access to material in the National Health Service.

Finally, your editor contributes his usual review of the literature over the past three months – not quite as long as the last two, which may be a relief to regular readers!

Mike McGrath