The future of resource sharing at the National Library of Canada

Citation

Murphy, B. (2003), "The future of resource sharing at the National Library of Canada", Interlending & Document Supply, Vol. 31 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ilds.2003.12231aab.002

The future of resource sharing at the National Library of Canada

The future of resource sharing at the National Library of Canada

Introduction

The National Library of Canada has made its collection available to off site patrons via interlibrary loan for many years now. In the early days books and photocopied journal articles were sent by regular mail. To speed up delivery of information to patrons courier services were sometimes used to send material to major city centres and special mail services were also used for libraries in remote areas. Eventually the fax machine and then Ariel allowed us to send information directly to another library, thereby reducing delivery times and saving on shipping costs, at least for those libraries that had and have the latest technology. The latest technology now allows libraries to create an electronic file and send it directly to the client and clients are also able to remotely access the National Library's collection and retrieve the document they want from its Web site.

This year the National Library of Canada experimented with sending material by electronic mail as an attachment.

Unique or too fragile to lend – a trial

For years now our interlibrary loan staff had been troubled by the fact that they receive many ILL requests every year for items that cannot be lent or duplicated, either because we only have one copy and it is in the preservation collection or because the circulating copy is too fragile to handle. And in many cases the material that has been requested is not available anywhere else. So here we have a situation where we are the only institution to hold an item but we cannot let anyone else see it, not even on-site patrons.

So the ILL Division decided to follow the example of other libraries and a working group was created to explore the possibility of creating a digitization program whereby we would scan material that was too fragile to lend or photocopy and either send an electronic copy to the requesting library or else put the scanned document on the National Library's Web site; the requesting library would then be provided with the URL where the scanned document may be found. Our thinking was that journal articles and chapters from monographs could probably be easily sent as an e-mail attachment because of their smaller file size whereas full-length books would go up on our Web site because the file would be too large to send.

The other question to consider was if we should place a scanned document on our Web site with all of the other electronic publications held by the National Library or simply place it on the ILL Web page for a few weeks, long enough for the patron to consult it, and then remove it.

Our criteria for the trial were as follows:

• •

  the item requested was unavailable for loan;

• •

  the National Library was the only location;

• •

  it was in the public domain;

• •

  it was approximately 100 pages or less;

• •

  it was published in Canada or dealing with a Canadian topic;

• •

  it could be scanned without causing permanent damage.

The timing of the trial was particularly good since the ILL Division had a book edge scanner on loan that it wanted to try out for potential purchase.

When we matched the requests for unsuccessful retrievals against the criteria for the digital project there were only about six candidates for digitization. However we went ahead and scanned a few of the items, some as short as ten pages, if nothing else to gain some experience using the scanner.

The National Library has been using a RELAIS scanning workstation to support our electronic document delivery activities. It is currently used to send scanned documents by ARIEL and fax.

It can also be used to send out scanned documents as e-mail attachments where the documents are first scanned as PDF files and then sent to the requesting library's e-mail address; this has worked very well. Additionally Relais can post the articles to a Web site for retrieval by the requesting library. After the articles are posted in PDF format to a secure Web site, an e-mail message is then sent to the requesting library providing them with a URL where the document may be retrieved. This latter procedure does work but still needs some refining before it can be integrated into our normal routine.

These alternative delivery formats offer the following advantages:

• •

  Speed of transmission to improve our turnaround time from the request to the delivery stage.

• •

  Reduction of potential damage to collections since the physical item is not as subject to the wear-and-tear caused by the mailing process.

• •

  Potential for providing interlibrary loan services for items that are only held at the National Library but are not available for loan.

Some limitations include:

• •

  The fact that the scanned documents may be too large to transmit over the Internet, and the receiving library's e-mail system may not be capable of receiving such large files.

• •

  Copyright restrictions in Canada include the provision that end-users may not receive an electronic copy of the document.

• •

  Copyrighted documents that are sent to the requesting library in electronic format or posted to a Web site are to be retained for a limited period of time, and then eliminated completely.

The types of documents in the collection that would benefit most from these two methods of delivery are those that are in the public domain, approximately 100 pages in length or too fragile or damaged to be loaned.

In the end the working group decided that there was an insufficient volume of material meeting the criteria to justify setting up a formal digitization program. In addition the ILL Division no longer had a book edge scanner, the two models having been removed by the vendors after a short trial. However the ILL Division continues to keep an eye out for items that could be scanned when that is the only way to make them available to clients.

This trial, small though the sample may have been, demonstrated that digitization on demand is technically feasible but is not the answer to filling remote users' information needs unless it is for the purpose of scanning a journal article or a chapter from a monograph under the "fair use" clause of the Copyright Act. Because of copyright restrictions the only complete item that may be scanned without seeking permission from the copyright holder must be at least 50 years old. The fact is that most of the material being requested on interlibrary loan from the National Library is less than 20 years old. And I do not see this trend changing drastically.

Rather I see digitization as a very useful means for preserving older items in our collection, much the same as the BOOKS2U! project in Austria (Mühlberger, 2002) where the objective is to create a digital collection of the most outstanding works of Austrian literature.

Conclusion

To conclude I think the National Library will continue for the next few years to supply material in response to ILL requests as it has in the past; we will lend our hard copy books and send them by mail and courier and we will photocopy and scan journal articles and send them by mail, by fax, via Ariel and also as an electronic attachment. When we receive a request for an item that is in the public domain and we are unable to lend it we may also attempt to scan it and send it electronically.

However because of copyright regulations we may only send a paper copy of the item directly to the patron; as long as an item is copyright protected we are not allowed to transmit an electronic copy to the end user.

Bill MurphyDirector (Acting), Resource Sharing National Library of Canada

Reference

Mühlberger, G. (2002), "Digitising instead of mailing or shipping: a new approach to interlibrary loan through customer-related digitisation of monographs", Interlending & Document Supply, Vol. 30 No. 2, pp. 66-72.