WILL INTERLENDING AND DOCUMENT SUPPLY SOON BE OBSOLETE?

1. WILL INTERLENDING AND DOCUMENT SUPPLY SOON BE OBSOLETE? Frederick J. Friend JISC Scholarly Communication Consultant Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL f.friend@ucl.ac.uk

2. PREDICTING THE FUTURE IS DIFFICULT! • “Are the days of Document Supply Centre numbered? Will we still need Boston Spa in ten years’ time?” Letter from F.J.Friend published in Library Association Record January 1989 • This was a prediction of the growth in importance of regional document delivery services (not a very good prediction!) • “Once electronic publication becomes established, we can move on to make our automated systems true information retrieval and document delivery systems” article by F.J.Friend in Program July 1991 (a better prediction but we are a long time getting there) • The moral: general trends can usually be perceived (e.g. the increasing use of electronic content) but their specific effect depends upon the actions of more than one stakeholder (i.e. the future is in the hands of others as well as ourselves)

3. FACTORS DETERMINING THE FUTURE OF DOCUMENT DELIVERY • “Document delivery is a service at the margins of current access to journal literature, and if it is to grow out of that marginal status, there has to be a willingness by the publishing community to make radical changes to the economic model and a willingness by the library community to abandon collection-building in favour of single-article access.” F.J.Friend in Interlending and Document Supply vol 30 no 4 2002 • Publishers want a growth in electronic document delivery but on expensive and restrictive terms which the library community and many in the user community are unwilling to accept • The status of a library is still determined by the size and range of its holdings – whether paper or electronic – and not by the percentage of user information needs satisfied • “Big deals” have encouraged libraries to purchase more content rather than concentrate on content users really need • While these factors prevail, document delivery is unlikely to grow

4. WILL MORE RADICAL CHANGES IN SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION HELP DOCUMENT DELIVERY? • If journals “de-construct”, or the article assumes a greater importance than the journal, will this lead to a change in user and library priorities? Will libraries switch funds to buy more individual articles than entire journals? • The outcome will lie outside libraries’ control, in the criteria adopted by funders for assessing research quality • If more articles are available on open access, and users become used to article-access rather than journal-access, will users be more willing to pay for those articles to which they cannot gain free access? • Will the “big deal” phenomenon collapse, opening up a route to more single-article delivery? • Document delivery would have to be fast, easy and cheap to take advantage of any increase in demand from users (cf. how the music industry has made access to pop music fast, easy and cheap)

5. FACTORS AFFECTING THE FUTURE OF LOANS OF PAPER VOLUMES • The cost of library storage: will libraries be forced to discard large numbers of older volumes, the very material sent on ILL? • The cost of library staff: how much does it cost to fulfil an ILL request now? • The cost and efficiency of alternative sources of supply: is it cheaper and quicker to buy a copy of a book through Amazon than to send it on ILL from one library to another? Will the BL supply of monographs continue, provide a cheaper/more efficient or expensive/less efficient source of supply than a CURL Library? • Conclusion: the market will determine the future of loans of paper volumes from library to library, and ILL services will have to compete

6. WILL A CHANGE IN ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURES HELP DOCUMENT DELIVERY AND ILL? • Closer integration of document delivery services with reference services could help – i.e. offer docdel at the point at which a reader is helped to identify an article • Closer integration of document delivery services with acquisition services could help – i.e. docdel as an alternative to collection-building (N.B. this has been discussed for many years but has anything actually happened?) • Could docdel/ILL services be shared between several libraries in a geographical area – i.e. some libraries out-source these services to a larger unit in another library? • Should all docdel requests be sent to the cheapest, most efficient supplier? Will that always be the BL or could a national docdel deal be negotiated with publishers along the lines of NESLi2?

7. WHAT WILL THE FUTURE BE? • Predictions are difficult because complex inter-locking factors are involved • The future is always in our own hands to some extent but the decisions of others – e.g the decisions of publishers on the terms for electronic docdel – will have a big effect • Closer integration of docdel/ILL services with other library services can only help • Offering a fast, easy and cheap service will attract end-users • There are many negative factors in the situation and only a few positive factors • Historically librarians working in ILL/docdel have provided a valuable service derived from in-depth experience and expertise, but factors outside our control are putting future services at risk • “Obsolete” is a strong term but certainly ILL/docdel services will have to adapt if they are to survive in a world that is changing fast