Citation
McGrath, M. (2007), "In this issue", Interlending & Document Supply, Vol. 35 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/ilds.2007.12235daa.001
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2007, Emerald Group Publishing Limited
In this issue
We make no apologies for returning to the case of Bibliotek-dk. It is a model for all countries to follow. The Danish citizen can access virtually all material held in Danish libraries from their desk top, request it and have it delivered to the library of their choice all for free – or even posted to their home for a small charge. Magnificent! The demand via the system translates into 25 million requests in a country like the UK. It makes Denmark the only country in the world to buck the trend of declining or static document supply. Kirsten Larsen describes the latest developments and a presentation will be given at the 10th ILDS conference in Singapore in October. A very welcome return after the absence of a couple of years is Mary Jackson’s column. Mary has moved jobs and now that the dust has settled – at least metaphorically – she “muses” on mergers, acquisitions, products as well as standards and the growth in document supply – at least in the USA. The experience of the USA and Europe in document supply in the last ten years is startling; so much so that it cries out for some analysis. Total volumes in the USA have only recently levelled out whereas in Europe – in particular the UK, France and Germany demand has declined by about 50 per cent and is still falling. Many reasons can be adduced and we have drawn attention to most of them in these pages. A personal perspective by Susanna Ashton provides additional evidence for this difference. The decline document supply in France seen from the perspective of INIST is described in detail by the formidable team of Joachim Schöpfel and Jacqueline Gillet. The regular annual review of document supply in the UK is provided by Stephen Prowse in his normal inimitable style. A rare article from Iran by Golnessa Moghaddam describes the role of aggregators in our rapidly changing world. South Yorkshire has perhaps the longest running cooperative in the UK and maybe in the world and is described by Carl Clayton. To round off your editor provides his regular review of the literature – in which the open access movement continues to receive the most attention. Are we at the beginning of a sea change in the production of scholarly communication? The jury remains stubbornly out.
We hope that there is something for everyone in this last issue of Vol. 35!
Mike McGrath