Charging for Document Delivery and Interlending: : Papers from the IFLA Workshop on Charging Held during the 62nd IFLA General Conference, 29 August 1996, Beijing

Citation

Calvert, P. (1998), "Charging for Document Delivery and Interlending: : Papers from the IFLA Workshop on Charging Held during the 62nd IFLA General Conference, 29 August 1996, Beijing", Collection Building, Vol. 17 No. 3, pp. 140-140. https://doi.org/10.1108/cb.1998.17.3.140.1

The library world has greatly changed since the “golden age” of the 1960s and 1970s when many Western countries raised taxes and fed considerable sums of money into the public sector. Back then there was very little discussion, or even concern, about charging for services, simply because library managers had sufficient money at their disposal to do just about everything they wanted to do without bothering about cost recovery. How times have changed! This collection of papers reflects that mood change very well.

One could start by reading Christopher Wright’s historical perspective on charging for document delivery. He points out that as long ago as 1898 librarians were concerned about the cost of providing an interlibrary loan service. He summarizes the long “fee or free” debate that has taken place since then. It will be useful for library school students to read this so they will realize that it was the “golden age” that was the major aberration, and not the current philosophy of letting the market do its job. Heinz Fuchs wrote the real introduction to this collection, and it is another paper well worth reading. He presents some of the economic arguments in favour of charging and the social reasons against charging. He acknowledges that, in the present climate, fees for this cost‐intensive service are becoming much more common. He argues for a standardization of prices, and proposes that the IFLA Voucher Scheme is an ideal solution. The Voucher Scheme is itself the topic of a paper by Sara Gould and Graham Cornish. Joan Chambers summarizes the very important Association of Research Libraries/Research Libraries Group Interlibrary Loan Cost Study, which has been the source of much important data. Mary Jackson reports on a subsequent study, the ARL’s Interlibrary Loan/Document Delivery Performance Measures Study. Frode Bakken and Else Nilsen give a Scandinavian perspective.

Some of the best known names in the field have contributed to this collection: Fuchs, Cornish, Jackson. The topic has been covered well, although it would have been good to see something about the North American Interlibrary Loan and Document Delivery Project included. Each paper has its own list of references. There is no central bibliography or index.

The collection is useful for specialized library and information science collections. Some of the papers have been published in similar form in Interlending & Document Supply so it might be worth checking that journal before purchasing this collection.